Virtual Christmas

Christmas is virtually upon us. “Virtually,” for sure. The obnoxious Ads on TV – the woman being handed one electronic device after another as gifts ($4000 worth by my count); the house where every closet is filled with wrapped gifts – depress me deeply. The reason for the season surely is to ensure that corporations reap the greatest profit from the most people, while ignoring the general state of the world we live in.

I feel melancholy about Christmas this year. On reflection, I have had that feeling about many Christmases over the past five decades. A number of factors feed this feeling. For many years, I was on-call Chaplain at whichever teaching hospital currently employed me. Those occasions produced more than a little tragedy. Baptizing a newborn at 11:30 PM December 24, born with kidneys the size of coffee beans, unlikely to live until morning. Two 17-year-old parents sobbing in the arms of their parents. Two nurses, stand-ins for “the body of Christ” in the same state. There are a dozen more stories like this one that colour my reflections on Christmas. I know that somewhere, likely within my own region, this sort of painful time is unfolding for someone else.

The final two or three years of my first marriage were painful as well. The state of my soul was not good, and all around me seemed dark. People tried to fake it light, but it never worked for me in those dark days.

I feel nostalgically sad at Christmas because I have no blood family around me to share the season. When I divorced, I felt sure that I would lose my children as well. In fact, I didn’t. Except at Christmas. In the thirty years since that event, I think I have had kin in my home at Christmas twice…perhaps three times. I lose track. At this season of the year, my loss, or leaving, is driven home for me: mother gets the kids.

In truth, that is probably appropriate. I no longer live in my old “home place.” I am “away.” I am not alone; the children’s mother, and would be devastated is children didn’t come. I’m not devastated, just sad…sometimes deeply sad. But that’s life, and I doubt that will change in whatever time I have left of life.

Christmas was a joy when I was the one conducted the joyful worship of Christmas Eve, where warmth was brimming over. To be in that role now, I would have to endure a couple of one-hour drives in the dark and cold to be celebrant for a small group of people. I have done that many times, but I no longer feel able to manage that. I’m not up to it any longer. I mourn the loss of a role I cherished.

I worked out in the pool last night with a trio of much younger women. More granddaughters than daughters they were. It was fun, but I had to face the creeping angina of trying to keep up with them in exercise or swimming. Not exactly a Christmas problem, but it reminds me of Joseph of the Stable-manger legend. Young spouse, young infant…old Joseph. What might he have wondered as he tried to fulfill the role given him by the angel visitor? I wonder that regularly. ‘Who am I today?’ ‘What am I called to do?’ ‘Is there someone else I should be?’ ‘Besides God, who cares?’

I struggled to help erect a beautiful tree, provided by lovely and generous neighbours. Bones all sore the next day from rolling around on the floor making sure it didn’t topple before Christmas. But it’s up, and the house looks great. Beatrix is crazy-busy, and I am happily cooking so we eat tonight. Who knows, perhaps before Christmas Eve is upon us, I’ll see stars and angels again, and, as it happened in the legends, the angels will sing and I will be dazzled. For now…I wait.