Our family didn’t do Santa.
We started to with our first child, but when she asked, “How does Santa know everything and how does he live forever?” at two years old, we ditched him.
I realized that even her young mind had picked out the inconsistencies between Jolly Old Saint Nick and what we were teaching her about God and the human condition.
The path to joy is filled with pain. The way to heaven is traveled through a world where children die and cruelty is common. Not every good little boy or girl finds their wishes fulfilled on Christmas morning.
This is precisely the place where the grieving find Christmas difficult.
Even Christ followers tend to section off the celebration of Jesus’ birth from the agony and necessity of His death. We welcome the Baby but disregard the crucified Savior. We like to pretend that “all is calm, all is bright”.
The pressure to maintain the facade of jollity overwhelms my heart and makes me weary down to my bones.
Joy and sorrow both dwell in my soul and I cannot reveal one and hide the other. I may laugh and cry in the same moment.
It is all too easy for others to welcome the laughter and to shut out the grief–to insist that those who gather pretend everyone gets what they want for Christmas.
No one can bring my son back to me. No one can giftwrap a restored family and place it under the tree.
But you can give me and other mourners space for our pain at the Christmas table.
You can honor those we miss by noting their absence–you can acknowledge that eternity is truly wonderful, but today is so very hard.
That is a gift we would treasure.
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