Tisn’t the season to be jolly
Why disappointment and despondency might display a true understanding of “the reason for the season”
December 5, 2007
Thea Marlatte
For many people, Christmas is not a joyous season, but one marked by anxiety, sadness, and disappointment. “Depression occurs so often during the holidays because people’s expectations aren’t met,” says Joyce Hamilton Berry, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist in Washington, D.C. Dr. Berry suggests that it is because of how Christmas has be sold to us: “Most people expect a Currier and Ives Christmas; they look at commercials on television and see family settings where everybody is so happy and the festivities are opulent. If they don’t have that, then something must be wrong, they reason.” The disappointment and depression is all the more painful because it feels so seasonally inappropriate. But is it?
At this point, Christians tend to pipe in with their diagnosis of the problem: people have forgotten “the reason for the season,” and set themselves up for disappointment by making it about presents or parties, by hoping in things that will never satisfy. An article appearing in Faith Today (Nov/Dec 2003) titled “Seizing Christmas” recounts the ways various Christian leaders try to take back Christmas:; “to protect their celebrations from the intrusion of busyness and materialism” so that the holiday could instead be an invitation “to kneel and be refreshed by the baby in the manger.” If we could just remember the “Christ in Christmas,” take time to be with loved ones, to be grateful for what we have then somehow we could recover, and proclaim, the seasonally appropriate joy.
However, despite valiant efforts to focus on “the reason for the season,” there are those who do not find themselves refreshed by it. For some, Christmas only brings to mind grief and loss: divorce, lost loved ones, a lack of family and friends or a nagging sense of loneliness and alienation in the midst of them. There are also many Christians unable to link their sadness to any such concrete explanations. They feel immensely blessed, and grateful for these blessings, yet they cannot seem to shake the lingering sense of being tired and unsatisfied.
There is guilt too, because surely we, of all people, should be bubbling over with gratitude. Surely we should be able to sing Isaac Watts’ “Joy to the World” with integrity and confidence since we believe that the Lord is come. Instead, we feel sad, muddled and anxious. We are frustrated by our inability to live the transformed lives we believe the Incarnation made possible, or to feel the joy we think ought to accompany it.
Yet, I think that some sense of sadness, disappointment and longing are entirely in keeping with the season, and for the Christian most of all. Personally, the disappointment that is pressed near at Christmas does not prompt me to seize it back from its secular usurpers, commerce and busyness. Instead, I remember that I’m not meant to be entirely satisfied. At least, not yet. Advent is not merely a remembrance of Christ’s coming but a longing for his return. Which is why it has traditionally been a season of fasting in the Christian church. There is something worshipful in that we are still hungering. We need not despair or obsessively analyze our “inexplicable” sense of disappointment. In fact, nothing could be more appropriate. The disappointment is a reminder that we are still waiting.
Celebrating the season does not require our whole-hearted assent to the declaration of “Merry Christmas!” The Advent season is about the freedom to acknowledge that all is not yet as it should be, the deep longing of “Maranatha – Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.”
Now you go...
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