“So this is Christmas”, to borrow the lyrics from John Lennon.  I knew it was coming.  I guess I’ve known it was coming all year – ever since the suddenness and finality of that terrible day in January became my reality.

And now, Christmas – “the best time of the year” - is here.  At least, the calendar says it’s here.  At least the trees and lights and decorations, both in my house and everywhere, say it’s here.  The music says it too, as do the TV shows , the Advent candles and the cards in the mailbox.  Everything says – no, screams – that Christmas is here.  Everything except my heart.

OK.  I know I am not the first, and that I am not the only one, to be facing Christmas alone for the first time.  My sister-in-law is in this boat too this year, and my sister went through it a few years ago.  Lots of you know this feeling. 

But it is still so strange.  And I find myself thinking that it shouldn’t be this strange for me.  Yes, I grew up in a place and time where Christmas was, for the most part, always and only about the joy, the happiness, the “tis the Season to be jolly, the “Ho-Ho-Ho”, the “laughing all the way” – you know, the awesome side of Christmas.  Yet during my childhood, there was always something else going on, kind of under-the-surface, but present nonetheless, which brought to my awareness, even from a young age, that not everyone at Christmas was filled with only happiness, and that not everything about Christmas was always “merry and bright”.   

In my hometown, the road we traveled to and from church three times a week took us right in front of a huge home, on a huge lot, with a huge window in a huge living room that faced the street.  And every Christmas Season, a large Christmas tree would appear in this window.  It always looked pretty much the same every year – which was unusual in a time before pre-lit and pre-decorated trees became a thing.  It was always a flocked tree [another fascinatingly unusual thing for us], and decorated with large round red and/or blue ornaments tastefully hung on the branches, and white lights [another rarity in those days when colored lights were what typically appeared on Christmas trees] shining on the branches.  It was a beautiful sight, and all of us kids would always clamber to the car windows facing this house to stare in wonder each time we passed. 

I don’t recall that this tree was ever set up particularly early in the Season.  But every year, the tree remained up and decorated in that window until long past New Year’s Day, long past Epiphany, and into February and even March as I recall.  Why?  There was nothing about the house or the lot it stood on that would suggest that the owners were simply too lazy to take the tree down after The Holidays were over.  No, there had to be a different explanation.  And the conclusion we reached was that either the husband or the wife in that house had died, sadly and tragically during The Holidays, and that leaving the tree up so long was how the survivor[s] remembered and grieved the loss.   

All of this was long ago.  That house doesn’t even exist anymore as I shockingly noted on a recent trip back home.  As I write this, I can’t even say whether our theory about the tree was something us kids came up with in our over-active imaginations, or whether it was something Dad told us.  Neither of these possibilities would surprise me.  Dad certainly knew enough about our hometown to have had access to such information if it existed.

But it doesn’t really matter whether there was an actual Christmas tragedy behind that beautiful tree which stood so long in that beautiful window in that beautiful home or not.  I believed that there was.  And so, from an early age, it had been impressed upon my spirit that sometimes the “merry” in Christmas is hard to find; that sometimes there is pain and sadness in “the most wonderful time of the year”.  This was something that I knew.  I could sing “Blue Christmas” along with Elvis; I could sing “Merry Christmas, Darling” with The Carpenters; I could sing “Same Auld Lang Syne” with Dan Fogelberg.  Sure, sad Christmas – got it; now where’s the “coffee and the pumpkin pie?”

What I am learning this year is that there is a difference between knowing and experiencing.  And the difference is not small.

This year, I find I have joined the owner of that huge house and beautiful tree in my hometown.  This year, I find that I have joined the tribe of those who try to “reach beyond the emptiness”, without knowing how.  This year, I am among those for whom, as we try to “make our way back home”, the once beautiful “White Christmas” snow in our Holiday minds has “turned into rain.”  And I’m not sure there’s any way back “home for Christmas” – home where all is “merry and bright” - except “only in my dreams”.

“So, this is Christmas?” 

Ambrose Ramsey | Pastor and Shepherd