What To Do if You Have the Christmas Blues
Hi all,
Your friendly neighborhood Sam here to talk a little bit about the reason for the season: facing family drama and tackling latent childhood trauma…
Just kidding! Kind of. For a little context, I was raised in a Protestant household (Lutheran then United Methodist). My family went to church every Sunday, and sometimes during the week for youth group or bible studies. My parents volunteered as ushers at Oakland United Methodist Church in Johnstown, where once a month, they’d don white polos (the usher uniform) and help collect the offering during service. My dad was involved in a men’s bible study and my mom taught Sunday School to the pre-school/kindergarten-aged kids. For a few years, I volunteered in the church’s nursery, looking after the babies and toddlers too young to attend Children’s Church.
I was fairly serious about my faith even into the early years of high school. I was obsessed with evangelizing my friends, and being someone worthy of God’s love. I really tried to be a good person, and I often felt guilty when I “failed.” By late high school, though, I was attending church because my parents made me go. Skipping church was out of the question; unless I came down with Swine flu or had a travel soccer game, my parents expected me to join them every Sunday, which, looking back, is kind of funny — only being allowed to miss church for severe sickness or a sporting event, and absolutely no in-betweens, absolutely no room for nuance or discussion. But when you’re a kid on the verge of graduating high school, you take your lumps where you can get them. At least we always stopped for food after church was over, and that was a bright spot in an otherwise murky and convoluted time for me. To this day, a Wendy’s cheeseburger tastes like a Sunday afternoon in 2008, which means it tastes like small comfort. What a vice grip nostalgia has on us all!
My late teenage years were rife with lots of things, both relatively normal and relatively not: hormones, depression, reckless optimism, an uncertainty about who I was and who I was becoming. God became a big question mark in my life, especially as I continued broadening my horizons through books and other media, especially as I started growing into my own personality and world view. If we’re lucky, this is a process constantly in flux, or at least one that is always open to modifications, always open to growth. These days, I strive to be always open to growth, which I think explains at least in some part my eventual path from devout believer to atheist to now: some kind of agnostic who really doesn’t know what’s out there and why. To be completely honest, I also don’t care to know or have the answers. I like living my life as if it’s the last one I’ll ever have and I like sometimes thinking I could be wrong. That about sums up my spirituality at the present moment.
Despite my evolving level of interest in church and religion between little-evangelist-sixth-grader me to “well-maybe-something-happens-to-us-after-we die-but-I-don’t-really-care-what”-30-year-old me, I’ve always been drawn, even sustained, by the capacity to witness something holy. Or to be in communion, in some way, with the earth and with other people, sometimes both at the same time. We can define holiness in any number of ways, each valid and unique to us as is our world view, but I won’t wax poetic about that here. Sometimes moments of holiness cannot be adequately shared via blog post, and that’s quite all right with me.
But one moment of holiness still acts as a through-line between my younger self and myself at present, and this is the Christmas Eve Candlelight Service. As a kid, this service was made almost unbearable with the anticipation of Santa’s arrival the following morning, but it was a natural high unlike any I’ve had since. Even in my doubt-ridden and ambivalent high school years, this service could kick up shadows of feelings I’d already come to believe were out of my reach for good. A deep sense of peace and belonging descended upon me as the sermon wrapped up and the overhead lights dimmed, signaling the time for candles and a brief yet beautiful collective acapella singing of Silent Night.
Everyone took out their candle we’d all received upon entering the sanctuary at the start of the service, stuck in its little plastic cup to catch dripping wax, and the ushers on duty would come in through the back doors and start lighting the candles of each person on the outside aisles of the pews. Then, we’d slowly tip and catch the flames down each row of pews until everyone’s face was lit from underneath by a soft, warm glow. Once the sanctuary was awash with these tiny pinpricks of light, some brave soul would start the first bar of lyrics until, like a wave, all our voices collapsed together to sing the old, familiar hymn:
“Silent night, Holy night,
All is calm, all is bright,
Round yon Virgin, Mother and Child,
Holy infant so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace,
Sleep in heavenly peace…”
When we’re kids, we are stuck with looking at life through the perspectives our parents or guardians can afford to give us, and when I was little that perspective for me and my family was heavily influenced by Christianity. My first experiences with holiness were inextricably linked to holiness as defined by the bible, or God himself. I never thought to question them until I could start sussing out my own identity as one apart from, but still informed by, my family’s. For instance, I no longer believe that holiness is mutually exclusive to God, either as a literal being or metaphorical construct. It has more to do with feeling a sense of love and belonging and yearning for life. Sometimes, that feeling may very well come by way of God. But it doesn’t have to.
Maybe the presence of God informed my first memory of Christmas Eve service as something special and holy. But now, God has transformed and evolved for me. What I find in holiness is equal parts love and something else, as yet unarticulated. I guess you could call that God. It’s the best definition of God I can come up with, at least the kind of God I’d want to subscribe to. For the purposes of this post, I’d like to leave it up to interpretation. If you want to call it God, call it God. If you don’t, what other possibilities are out there to explore?
Christmases these days are fraught with a lot of hurt and painful memories, as I’m sure they are for a lot of people — anyone who has experienced loss or abandonment, anyone at odds with their family’s world view, anyone for whom family is not a safe and secure entity…the holidays are often spiked with unwanted thoughts and feelings we’d rather avoid or never confront. If you can hold on to something good and pure, even if just for a split second, I hope you can give yourself permission to consider it holy: a lit candle and a collective voice; a snowy midnight walk with someone you love; a happy memory held up against the present’s lack of warmth and light; a moment of clarity in a sea of confusion. Gather up these faculties, hold them tight. Then let them go and move on. You can do this.
Love and happy holidays to you and your loved ones,
Sam
