(recommended listening)I am reflecting on how many more people this holiday season will be experiencing a blue Christmas. From the simple sadness of staying separate to forestall death, to the terrible realities of those who have already lost loved ones to this pandemic; from the financial uncertainty, lost jobs, lost health, and lost homes, to the mobile morgues all across the country – very few of us are facing the holiday to which we have been accustomed.
I counsel many people who lost “Christmas” long ago, due to childhood abuse, or family rejection, or the loss of religious belonging and faith. Many try to erase all meaning from the season as if that will remove the pain of the losses. Others try to pretend they don’t care about the holidays, yet end up angry at others’ joy and playfulness, and attack the meaning others find in the season. (Like a true Grinch. Did anyone ever ask how the Grinch’s heart got so small, to begin with? Such anger is not uncommon and is even an understandable response to the degree of loss. Anger is a stage of grief.)
Still others seek to rebuild some new meaning around new traditions, in order to find more robust and resilient meaning and to reclaim the holidays in some new way for themselves. They build chosen families where they can find the comfort, inclusion, and joy which their original families can’t offer them. This is a path of hope and creativity and acceptance. As a lifelong Christian, who has had her own traumatic loss of religious belonging, and journeyed through agnosticism and atheism, I’m reflecting on how much of the Nativity story is NOT about comfort and joy. Indeed, the poignant and sometimes dreadful aspects of the Biblical narrative can provide so much space for belonging, resonance, and tenderness for those of us in mourning and uncertainty. One does not need to believe that an actual Jesus, son of God, was born on earth to a virgin to find metaphorical resonance in the great narrative, any more than one needs to believe there is an actual Santa Claus to find the season joyful. The story captures our hearts and makes a place for communal self-recognition if not always celebration.
You see, the mourning of all the mothers in the region of Bethlehem whose infants were torn from their arms and slaughtered (Matthew 2:16–18) is also a part of the Christmas story, and points to the horrors enacted by those seeking to preserve and maintain power even at the cost of the lives of the most innocent and powerless.
The homelessness of the couple seeking somewhere to give birth also illustrates the inhumanity already in the world, the very world into which the Divine (goodness, compassion, wisdom, gentleness) was trying to be born. They were excluded. They were not considered worth the inconvenience required to find them any space. Instead, the world was either indifferent or murderously hostile to this vulnerable message of comfort and joy. How hard is it even now to welcome some collective kindness and vulnerability and softness into our shared experience?
Only simple guardians of innocence (shepherds) are able to hear the good news: that a big change was coming. This baby would be the living embodiment of wisdom, compassion, healing, and social justice—so desperately needed as much then as now. This savior is precisely coming to those grieving and rejected, lost and abandoned, hunted and shamed. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they WILL be comforted.” That is a promise. The story isn’t over yet. This story is about the promise of justice and radical kindness. You see, the comfort and joy, the light in the darkness, the hope after great struggle and despair is just one part of the whole story. Whether we are experiencing homelessness or displacement, rejection, and hostility, great mourning or anger, and despair, we are in the story too. And those experiences are the reason for the story. If all was brightness and joy all the time, there would be no need for a savior.
Nothing much has changed in humankind, which is why the genuine story continues to resonate. The Christmas story is not so much about whether something amazing happened 2000 years ago, but whether you and I and our world TODAY is ready to welcome great joy for all people. Today? Now? Do we include all people in our desire for comfort and joy, be they straight or queer, atheist or orthodox, similar to us or radically different from us? Or do we still think God loves some people (us), more than others (them)?
And so, in 2020, do we include those who are mourning? Do we let each other feel what we need to feel, and still love each other completely? Do we ask how we can support someone who is grieving or hurt or rejected this time of year and ask what would feel like a blessing to them? What would give them a tiny bit of comfort and joy despite everything? To welcome and acknowledge (all feelings and) all cultural holiday traditions this time of year is deeply Christian in my imagination. As it is deeply Jewish, and Muslim, and pan-African, and Buddhist, and Hindi—indeed, the deepest wisdom of all the great traditions point to the same values of inclusion, non-abuse, hospitality, equality, and compassion. I don’t need to throw out the Christian story because some Christians try to make it invalidate all others. It includes a deep look at all the aspects of humanity, horrifying as well as redemptive, and it was never meant to be exclusive. And so this bruised and battered Christian is finding new and comforting meaning in the nativity story this year. May you find new and comforting meaning this year too, no matter where, how, and through what medium you find it. Namaste, aloha, amen, peace be upon you, and all other acknowledgments of shared humanity,
Alison & Sam
We are well! (fingers crossed) Sam continues at his job with Penguin Random House Publishing, and we remain hunkered down in New York City, making the best we can of some very hard times. Sam's father, sisters, brothers-in-law, nephew, and nieces also remain unscathed. There are many things for which we can be grateful!
To one and all, may 2021 be ever so much better than 2020!
AliSam
