This year's holiday season begins on the heels of a political campaign that gave a lot of people PTSD symptoms. Covid-19 left some of us missing our loved ones. Prices are rising and we are concerned by how we will make ends meet. All one needs to do is turn on the TV or scroll through social media to discover how fractured we all feel.

The holidays come right after the Daylight Savings time change, which supposedly will no longer be happening starting in 2023. But until then, it is now dark at 4:40 PM and some of us who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder would like to crawl towards bed and hibernate. The light of the summer is past, and the color of autumn may still need to be raked off our lawns. We tolerate this darkness that descends on our psyches for three months.

Finally, for many, the holidays remind us that we are missing loved ones who died. My husband and I are now patriarch and matriarch, and have been this way for more years than we would have hoped. We have lost precious ones we used to share the holiday with and now there are no parental figures above us who buffer us from the sense of our mortality. I find I am not the only person in this “club of loss” when I hear my friends speak of their first holidays without a person who has died this past year.

Holiday Expectations

Advent speaks of hope.

I hope for winter solstice bringing me precious minutes of light back into my hibernation. I hope everyone enjoys their presents and that I can bake cookies for neighbors. I hope I have enough quiet moments to read my Advent devotional. My hopes are anemic compared to biblical hope and expectation. My holiday hopes are shaped by our local shopping malls that began decorating and piping in music as Halloween candy was going on sale.

Holidays are a mixture of memories and movies that suggest perfection. We long for a feast that invites us to feel full but not stuffed, to enter a house feeling the welcome of belonging. We desire laughter, warmth, joy and delicious food–that IS what commercials are selling us during the televised breaks of parades and football games. We believe if we try hard enough to do things right, our holidays will be excellent.

I mentally carry around “the Sacred Check-List of Christmas.” It goes something like this:

List presents you think people in your family want, imagining the satisfaction and joy they will feel forever after they open the package.
Research this list comparing prices to find these items. Create a spreadsheet.
Stop and drag out all the decorating stuff to trim the tree. Rearrange the furniture and put piles of things you use away in a box so you can have room to put out Christmas decorations.
Vacuum the rug and put away boxes to keep the house tidy. Ignore the headache that has begun behind your eye.
Create a Martha Stewart-type tablescape and menu to feed ten adults and seven small children.
Carefully craft an email to your family about the Christmas Eve service starting at 4 p.m. and suggest clothing attire so you can grab a family photo. DO NOT suggest you will host them for dinner afterwards.
Sit down and drink tea for a few minutes to escape the anxiety you feel and pay attention to the headache you can’t ignore.
Research how much it would cost to escape to England next year at Christmas.
Write “coffee cups with lids” on the shopping list to protect the rug from spilled coffee.
Begin wrapping presents to get a jump on the wrapping frenzy of Christmas Eve. Realize the amount of toys you bought for your grandkids is not equal and one grandchild will get more. Create a last minute shopping list.
Make an appointment with your therapist…

So goes my list. I have 14 days left until Christmas and although I sing of Emmanuel coming, I feel none of it in my heart.

My irrational belief: the joy of Christmas depends entirely ON me. What mom doesn’t think this? We plan, organize and attempt the impossible, hoping for that look of magical delight to flicker across our loved ones’ faces. We long for our grandchild’s smile as he finds a new toy and runs in place with excitement. We moms LIVE for a look that says we have satisfied someone, although our iPhone’s snapshots rarely register that moment in its glory because it is so elusive.

A Yearning for Something More

To hold these feelings of hope is to admit the glory we were created for in Eden. However, no matter how well you prepare, how good your family behaves, and how many presents you buy, there is no family or food that can live up to the expectations our souls seem to crave. Fullness, joy, family, laughter, warmth, peacefulness, and belonging. Aren't these impossible expectations to place on the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas?

I enjoy watching my grandchildren decorate the porch with dollar tree decorations and my husband’s help. They play with the Fisher Price crèche scene that they only see once a year. The kids squeal with excitement when they see stacks of presents arranged with their names on the tags. But no matter what lies within the holiday paper, it will not be enough. Something will be missing and strike the chord of yearning.

My grandson once asked on Christmas morning after opening all of his gifts, “Nanny, are there MORE presents or is that all there is?”

I knew what his five-year-old heart meant. It is the seed of discontent we all feel in the tension between hope and longing for more. The truth is, we are still that same child with only more sophisticated expectations of what we feel is missing from our lives.

At least, that’s how the holiday season feels when I wrongly believe that the joy of Christmas depends solely on me.

Christmas Redemption

I know something much larger than any Christmas present will result in the joy I yearn for. Like a laboring mother, I can breathe through the contractions of winter and wait for the birth of a Savior–and the signs of winter’s redemption.

Consider the real Christmas gift narrative found in Luke 2—a celestial angel showing up with an extravagant light show, announcing words given by God: “Don’t be afraid, for behold, I bring you joyful news!” The universe’s joy was so big that the heavenly host (a bunch of celestial beings who travel in packs) joined up for a worship service that stopped everyone on the field. These angels were so overcome with delight that they couldn’t help themselves from shouting/singing: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to those on whom His favor rests.”

Not “Glory to Mom.”

Full stop.

Why am I not more moved that His favor rests upon me? As a matter of fact, His favor is much better than a look I might get from someone for a well-cooked meal or a carefully chosen gift. His favor can’t be taken away; it isn’t plastic and breakable or requires batteries.

The folly of my Christmas expectations will fade from my memory before the new year comes. Lent will be near soon and the early weeks of March will begin to point to new life. No matter how lousy the weather may be, the purple crocus, yellow daffodil, and orange tulip color shooting out of the soil give me the chance of breathing deeply, knowing the weeks ahead will thaw out my soul.

Resurrection Sunday shudders and shakes me alive. Easter promises that the relatives and friends I have seen buried will be made alive, that my arthritic joints will be released from pain, and that the world will once again be made new. And in the pattern of longing, redemption, and new life, we find hope that sustains in these dark times between Christ’s first arrival and His second.