Peace, Hope, and Joy

Originally posted December 25, 2019

I’ve always loved Christmas. I love the music and the movies and the home-made goodies. I love the traditions and the family gatherings and telling random people “Merry Christmas!” everywhere I go. And don’t forget the lights… There is no such thing as too many Christmas lights. I won’t be completely satisfied until my house is a beacon of holiday happiness visible from the International Space Station.

I LOVE Christmas. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year.

The origins of my love for Christmas go much deeper than just the magical belief in Santa Claus as a small child. It’s actually much more tangible than that, because even before I came to faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior in my late teens, Christmas still meant two things to me: peace and joy.

There were many years of my childhood that felt pretty tumultuous. My parents’ marriage died a slow and difficult death, and for the last decade they were married, our house was often filled with tension and arguing. But something mysterious and magical always happened in December – I like to call it “The Great Family Armistice”.

It was like an unspoken treaty: There is no fighting during Christmas.

I don’t know whether it’s because my Mom’s birthday is in December or that her love language is gift giving or just the joy of the holiday season in general, but as soon as those boxes came down from the attic and the tree went up, happiness filled the house.

I’d always watch in amazement as she decorated the fireplace mantel with such beauty and precision, finding every little trinket its own perfect place to be showcased, like watching someone create a masterpiece. She’d string the tree with lights and then let us decorate it. We’d tune a radio to a station playing Christmas music, she’d bake things that smelled delicious, and we’d all bask in the warm, fuzzy glow of Christmas lights and holiday cheer.

We’d go to family gatherings and smile and laugh, not in fakeness, but in my recollection, like the happy family we wanted to be. I’d see my parents who struggled to have civil conversations band together to become the best Christmas shopping duo you’ve ever seen in action. I’ve never seen two adults more willing to temporarily lay down their own grudges to work together to make something special for their children. And I still see this happen every day as they co-grandparent my kids without any post-divorce drama or spite.

My mom has always been a last minute wrapper. Even long after we stopped believing in Santa, she still never put presents under the tree until we’d gone to bed on Christmas Eve, which made the excitement of Christmas morning even more suspenseful.

I’d wake up on Christmas morning, usually first, and creep toward the living room with anticipation leaping from my chest. I’d peek around the corner and find that Christmas had exploded in the living room. My young self probably even audibly squealed in delight.

I’d usually wake up my sister, and then we’d wake up my parents and beckon them to the living room like giddy school children. There would always be a groggy demand for coffee and food, so my sister and I would go put on a pot of coffee and pop some cinnamon rolls in the oven as payment for their marathon night of gift wrapping.

We’d summon them again, but this time with hot cinnamon rolls, and that usually seemed to do the trick. And once we finally got them in the living room, coffee in hand, we’d sit with visual anticipation waiting for mom to tell us which gifts to open. She always had a method to the gift opening, like she was building us up to a grand finale that couldn’t be spoiled by one of us accidentally opening a box out of order.

And for a couple of hours, we’d sit and open gifts and smile and laugh and marvel at the perfect presents they somehow knew we wanted even though we’d never actually mentioned them before.

I’d hear my parents refer to each other as “Dear”, something that was definitely not common. They’d even get each other meaningful and heartfelt gifts, and every year the thought would cross my mind that maybe they actually could be happy together.

There was relaxation and maybe even relief on their faces, because they had done it again. One more year, they were able to give us a Christmas Miracle – the perfect day full of love and peace and joy.

Even in the months after Christmas, when home life slowly returned to its unpredictable volatility, I’d often think to myself, “Well, at least there is always Christmas.”

And there was always a magical Christmas… until 2004 when my parents finally filed for divorce during the Spring of my Senior year of high school – something everyone knew had been a long time coming, but was still difficult for all of us, nonetheless.

And when the Christmas season arrived that first winter, I was still optimistic and cheerful as usual. After all, Christmas had never let me down before.

I took such care to make sure that our house looked just like it did all the years before. I’d watched my Mom do it for so many years, so I knew just where to put every knick-knack and every bow to make it look just right.

Everything seemed pretty normal, until Christmas Eve, when I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning wrapping presents by myself. I carefully arranged them all underneath the tree and then stepped back across the room to behold the wonder of everything Christmas, when suddenly, one of the saddest feelings I’d ever felt hit me like an avalanche.

I stood there looking at this beautiful tree glowing in the darkness with all its treasures tucked beneath, when tears began streaming down my cheeks. I could no longer pretend that tomorrow was going to be the happiest day of the year. Our perfect Christmas mornings were over. And no matter how hard I tried to replicate the years past, no Christmas going forward would ever be the same. And I went to bed devastated.

____________

Fast-forward a few years, after the dust from the divorce settled, and we actually all started celebrating Christmas morning and gift-opening together again like we always did. Like I said before, my parents have a unique ability to put their differences aside for their kids, and now their grand-kids. It’s something you don’t see very often, but it’s something I’m incredibly grateful for.

Our family Christmas evolved over the years and began to take on new life when I got married in 2013, and then when we quickly started adding kids to the family.

In the fall of 2015, my husband and I started looking for a house with a little more room, since we’d added 2 kids in less than 2 years and were busting from the seams in our first home.

From the first time we viewed the house we live in now, I was already dreaming of what our family Christmas would be like in this big, open living room, with space for the big, full Christmas tree I’d never had to room to put up in our other house. Visions of garland and tinsel danced in my head.

We closed on this house a few days before Christmas and actually decided to move most of our things and spend the first night here on Christmas day of 2015. It was the best Christmas gift ever, and I already couldn’t wait to decorate for Christmas 2016.

We spent two amazing Christmases together in this house as a family of 4, soon to be 5. We had room to host the whole family on Christmas morning. Christmas had begun to feel magical again, through the eyes of my children.

And then tragically, my husband unexpectedly passed away in March of 2018, leaving me with two small kids and another one on the way. We were, and still are in so many ways, completely devastated.

Christmas of 2018 was our first holiday season without him, and to be quite honest, it wasn’t as horrible as I thought it would be. Everyone says the first year is the hardest, but I’d have to say the second year has been much harder emotionally. I don’t know if it’s because at Christmas of last year, I was still full of hopeful optimism that I’d make it through this valley without losing my mind, but 365 more days of being a single-mom of three kids 5 and under has definitely threatened to beat out of me every ounce of optimism I had last year.

Life is hard. And exhausting. And lonely. And the things I’d come to love about sharing Christmas with my husband and our kids just obviously aren’t the same.

This holiday season has just been a struggle. I’ve spent most days feeling myself withdraw into emotional survival mode just to get myself through the family event or bedtime with the kids. I keep finding myself lost in thought, staring blankly across the room, thinking about my husband, all the things he’s missed in almost two years and all the things he’ll continue to miss in the future.

I think about my two older kids, and I wonder if they even remember Christmas with their Dad, and then I think about the youngest one who was deprived of knowing him at all.

I think about what I would have bought him for Christmas this year, or what he would have bought me. And what ridiculous boy toy he would have insisted on getting our oldest son that would have been way too mature for him; or what girly thing he would have been convinced his little princess needed.

I think about how proudly he would have paraded his beautiful kids around to all the family events this year, especially the youngest one who looks just like him.

I find myself thinking about the day he died, which I haven’t done in a long time, and I feel like I get stuck in the fog of disbelief that overshadows the early days and months of loss – something I thought I was passed by now.

I’ve tried so hard to get myself out of this funk. I’ve done all the things I normally do at Christmas. I’ve decorated everywhere. I bought and wrapped all the gifts. We’ve done all the craft projects, baked all the cookies, sang all the songs, watched all the movies, read all the stories, and seen all the lights. I’ve done all the things, but yet I haven’t been able to shake that 2004 feeling that Christmas is broken.

Then, I was sitting on my couch one night a few days ago, enjoying the silence and staring at the glow of the Christmas tree, when I caught a glimpse of the wooden cross that hangs on the wall behind it, peaking out from the side of the tree. That’s where this cross normally hangs, and for whatever reason I didn’t move it before I changed out the decor for Christmas. It’d been there on display behind the tree for a few weeks, but for some reason, at that moment, whether because of the angle or the lighting, the cross behind the tree jumped out at me with profound symbolism, and I began to think about the night Christ was born in a manger.

By the Biblical account, it was truly a divine moment in history. The sky lit up with a bright star, angels sang so loudly to shepherds in a field that they fell to the ground in terror, strangers traveled from afar to worship this unknown child. When you read the Bible, you can’t help but get the feeling that creation was announcing the arrival of something, someone, extraordinary – a celestial celebration.

And yet, before one king bowed the knee to the Christ child, the cross was already foreshadowed in his future. The saddest day in history – the day the sky turned black and the earth violently quaked with the Son of God slain on a cross – already looming behind the basket of hay that baby Jesus rested upon.

What is Christmas, if anything, without the cross?

If Christmas is about gifts, then what happens to your idea of Christmas when you have no money to exchange gifts? If Christmas is solely about family, then what happens to your idea of Christmas when the people you love the most are no longer here? When they die?

Without the cross, Christmas is relegated to any number of finite things that will eventually lose meaning or cease to exist altogether, and then what?

When we forget the cross behind the tree, we lose sight of the greatest gift and the real meaning of Christmas – the gift of Hope. That’s what this day was 2,000 years ago – the day Hope was born into humanity.

The birth of Christ, as Holy as it was, was a mere security deposit on the things God had promised. There was no salvation with his birth. There was no redemption with his birth, but yet Creation loudly proclaimed the hope of his coming glory.

I think the song “O Holy Night” says it best when it says,

“The thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices,

for yonder breaks a new and glorious morning.”

After 400 years of silence from God, no wonder the “weary world” rejoiced. It was proof that God had not forgotten them. It was a sign that salvation was near. It was and still is a reason to hope.

So If you’re finding yourself in a season like me, where life feels broken and like it will never be the same, or maybe it’s just never been what you thought it would be, I pray that when you look at the manger, you see the hope of the cross.

If you’re trying so hard to make Christmas magical for your family amid the emptiness in your own heart, I pray you let “the thrill of hope” carry you through this season, and rest in the knowledge that God has not forgotten you.

May we all let the Prince of Peace reign in our hearts, so that we can hold tightly to the true meaning of Hope this Christmas.

Blessings,

Shannon