Last year I was at Redlands UCC in Southern California, and I was officiating our first Blue Christmas service. I was carrying some grief and sadness in my own life but had a particular congregant in mind who had lost his wife to brain cancer earlier that week. I planned to light a candle for him and his family, but I didn’t have to: the man himself walked through the front door for the first time since she died. I was so impressed with his ability to get out of bed, let alone see other people. It was also understandable – he had been leaning on his faith since they found the tumor a short 4 months earlier.
So many people are carrying heavy burdens during the Christmas season, and I’m so glad we created a space for him to walk into where he didn’t have to pretend he was OK, where he could hold the pain of his loss and receive spiritual nourishment from his church. It’s very rare that someone loses their life partner days before the service, but whether it’s days or years, the memories and pain are there. The focus of Christmas is so often on the festivities and the cheer, we can feel like the grinch when we are carrying pain, stress and grief.
But Jesus didn’t come to a joyous world. He brought joy, but he was the light of the world breaking into darkness. Oppression, loneliness, suffering, death and sin were the background of his arrival then and they are the background each time he is born anew in this world. So it is good and right for us to celebrate his arrival with joy – to have potlucks and cookie swaps and pageants on “Joy Sunday,” but it’s also good and right for us to have a quiet, reflective service of healing like our Longest Night Blue Christmas service that will be at 5 p.m. on December 21 in the church sanctuary. We will have music, liturgy, readings and an opportunity to light candles and offer prayers for loved ones. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, either – we can do both. We can hold both the joy and the pain of the season together, in community.