Christmas is the worst.

I’m glad for people who have a cozy-family-together-Christmas, and I wish it for any and for all. In my youth, and even now, I dream about that cozy wonderful picture of a bustling house: noisy with bustling grandchildren packed around a generous table covered with Christmas dinner delights, the warm glow of candle-light in their eyes as we sing ancient carols, passing down from great- to grand- to parents to children the same melodies and lyrics of our earliest Christmas memories.

I live in an Evangelical sub-culture where these dreams and stories persist, writ large in Christmas pagents or ads on Christian media. I’m happy for them. I hope they are real. A former pastor once told me “Family is how God gives us a taste of heaven.” If ever a day in Evangelical life would be that, it would be Christmas.

But I nearly laughed out loud when he said it. My father died 3+ decades ago, my mother a decade later. Another decade and the children grew up and moved out; their mother followed soon after. So those tastes of heaven - of Christmas joys - are at best a faint memory, if they ever were or would have been, melting like a crystaline snowflake falling into an icy muddy river.

Of course there are many scores of people who have suffered tremendously more than I can even fathom. My trials hardly compare. But for all of the sorrow in the lines of my life - the pain of losing loved ones to death, estrangement, separation, for divorce and its way of shattering long-forged ‘family’ relationship - for all of that, I saw something today as I was bracing myself for yet another Christmas.

When you fashion a house, you have to make choices - no design is going to be quite suitable for every season of life. I live in my house 365 days, and for most of those days, there is hardly a place I can think of that would better suit my life. The dreamed of home of my youth with it’s glorious Christmas day is just not the home I have today. If I trust in God’s providence - and I do - then apparently I was not suited for that design. And it was not suited for me. This past decade living singly has proven to be a great benefit to my life. Though enormously costly, I would not re-write the script.

That’s what I came to see today, as I dread another Christmas day and wish that somehow things would be different. So I expect that Christmas will continue to be one of the worst days of the year not because of what is in that day, but because of the ’shadows’ of what is not in it. There are 364 other days in the year, and many many of those suit me perfectly fine. What is wanting, then, in any day that does not meet my naive ‘expectations’ is thanksgiving for what is provided, and generously sharing the fruit of that.

I don’t want to dismiss the sorrow that I and many single, and singled, people feel at Christmas. As I said, I have children and grandchildren to be grateful for. Brothers and sisters in Christ who have left family and friends to serve the Lord away from the comforts of home will feel a much greater loss on this day. Believers who have remained single all their lives and not had the joy of romance, partnership, parenting regularly struggle with days like this on their calendar.

So Christmas day can still be the worst. But it’s only one day. And other days can be better exactly because of what is worse about this day. And ultimately, all of that is because of our hope of another day ahead.

Flourishing are the mourners because they will be comforted.[1] Matthew 5:4

Footnotes

[1] translation of Matthew 5:4 from Pennington, Jonathan T.. The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing (p. 143). Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.)