Christmas Blues

Christmas carols, chilly breeze infused with the fragrance of pine trees, hustle for gift-buying and grocery shopping, hot chocolate, festive lights, and decorations…

It’s beginning to look, smell, and taste like Christmas! It’s the happiest day of the year, but for so many, it’s also the loneliest.

This is the season of excitement and anxiety, anticipation and fear, festivities and the blues.

This time of the year evokes nostalgia from different stages of my life.

Christmas in my early years
​​As a child, “Noche Buena” was the highlight of my Christmas. “Noche Buena,” a Filipino tradition for Christmas feasting, begins on the 25th at the strike of twelve. In our household, the madness of banquet preparations kept us alert and energized. Our kitchen was transformed into a circus. My brothers’ faces, covered with whip cream, teased and cajoled, arm wrestled, and engaged in food fights. My poor mother switched from chef to sheriff, as she commanded her five sous chefs into order.

Then came the most anticipated gift-giving ritual. Each person gives something to everyone, but the giver makes it almost impossible for the recipient to get the gift. For example, the gift could be hidden in the dog house or in a rathole somewhere, so one needs to follow a map to find it. The effort put into tracking down a gift was way more than its cost. But harmless trickery was the name of the game. It was always an all-nighter filled with laughter and uproar. At the break of dawn, we’d join the neighborhood kids to play at the park.
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As a young adult, Christmas was mostly spent with a special someone. When there was no one special, the lonely ones banded together to provide a listening ear or a shoulder to cry on. At the same time, we drank ourselves to numbness until the holiday was over.

Christmas as a mother
The Holiday season is one of the biggest reasons I wanted more than two children. Although my family practiced the same traditions, it wasn’t as rowdy as it used to be. But since our children are DNA upgrades, they perfected the gift of pranking. We built memories for the books – or rather for social media. Woe to the next generations of Christmas pranksters and their victims!

It was during the holiday season when we migrated to America. My husband, our kids, and I didn’t feel the Christmas spirit at all. In the Philippines, we were used to loud music, fireworks, street dancing, and homes open to everyone for feasting. We couldn’t believe that people slept through Christmas eve and the neighborhood was quiet. Throughout Christmas day, we felt so homesick we didn’t even realize that we had each other.

​Christmas in our empty nest
​​This year, my husband and I may spend Christmas without our kids. While we’re happy our children are where they’d want to be, our empty house makes my soul vulnerable to Christmas lament. Putting up a Christmas tree and decorations would be tedious. We’ll probably share a simple dinner, read Bible verses, sing praises, and recall Christmas memories. We could do a group Facetime call when everyone is available. Then we would tell silly stories to one another, only this time virtually.

Countless individuals go through Christmas blues. In the past, it was usually because they missed loved ones or they were homesick. Recently, the pandemic compounded the blues and upended all celebrations. Countless individuals are either withdrawn, unable to go out, or afraid to mingle with people. There is a growing starvation for the human touch and the sense of community. 

The lonely situation, intensified by this so-called “new normal,” will not change anytime soon. But we can reshape the way we look at it. Our lonely space is an opportunity to commune with our Lord. Because He himself is a man of sorrows, He is waiting for us to share ours. As Isaiah describes: 

He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 
Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted.
(Isaiah 53:3-4 NKJV)

The lonely space in our hearts where we can be honest and intimate with our Lord is the same place we can draw our strength. It’s not just for the holidays, but for every day. We may not realize it, but loneliness is a resident in our hearts, buried in work, busyness, and our regular routine, and uncovered at Christmas.

Blaise Pascal said:
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“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man which cannot be satisfied by any created thing but only by God the Creator, made known through Jesus Christ.”

How timely it is to reflect on our nature as a relational being who needs to belong to a family and community in a place they can call home. 

Could it be that only Jesus, whose birth we celebrate, can satisfy this mysterious longing or sadness in our hearts?
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Could Christmas be pointing to an eternal home where the family will never be separated by time, distance, or death?