If you’re carrying grief during December, all the holiday cheer in the air can feel more like an assault than a blessing.
Grief doesn’t follow a schedule, doesn’t pause for Advent and Christmas, and can feel more acute in contrast with the joy and wonder of the season.
When I didn’t want to decorate my apartment for Christmas one year, my husband teased my “Grinch-y” behavior. But he also asked what was going on.
At that point, we had been trying to get pregnant for a few years. All I wanted for Christmas was a baby. No Christmas tune or string of lights could lift the weight of that longing and grief.
But while lights and familiar songs are the ways we’ve chosen to celebrate the “reason for the season,” the reason goes far deeper than the syrupy-sweet tone December can take on.
In this week’s readings, the prophet Baruch tells the people who have seen their sons and daughters scattered by war and exile, driven from their homeland, and made slaves to a foreign nation to “take off your robe of mourning and misery.”
He’s not dismissing their grief.
He’s telling them that God knows that things aren’t the way they should be. Everything is not alright. And that’s why he’s coming.
He’s coming to be with us.
He’s coming to lead us into joy.
He’s coming to restore justice.
He’s coming to show us he remembers our suffering.
He’s coming to restore us to wholeness.
He’s coming to recreate us as his sons and daughters.
He’s coming to level the obstacles between us and him.
He’s coming to complete the good work he began in us.
He’s coming to lead us into salvation.
If you’re living with grief this holiday season, I’m so sorry. I know how difficult it can be. If it helps, skip some of the parties, lights, and music. They’re not what Christmas is about anyway.
And if you can, invite Jesus to join you, just as you are. What we really celebrate at Christmas is that God saw our misery and didn’t want to make us face it alone.
He is God-with-us, Emmanuel. God with us in our grief. God with us in our suffering. God with us in our longing.
Jesus may not take away your grief or your suffering on December 25, but, no matter what, he wants to give you the gift of himself.
Christmas is for you.
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Andrea Jackson is a Content Creator and Ministry Consultant at the Evangelical Catholic. The Evangelical Catholic’s mission is to equip Catholics to live out the Great Commission. Learn more.
