For many years I have been fighting a winter bug. It took awhile for me to realize the pattern year after year. That's because it was a slow descent into becoming a holiday humbug.
Holiday Humbug
Humbug has taken on a grinchy vibe, a dismissive displeasure with holiday festivities, but actually Scrooge was expressing that he thought Christmas was a complete fraud or hypocritical nonsense. I don't know if I ever got that jaded, but I certainly found myself feeling that celebrating Christmas contradicted how I actually felt.
It was exactly 14 years ago when I first began to notice my less than 'merry & bright' self as the Christmas season approached, but it had been a very hard year in general, so I think I wrote it off as that remaining down-hearted feeling. But there was much more I was unaware of that was affecting me, and my moods were growing in darkness just like our northern winter skies. One of those influences was a seed of discouragement that had been planted a few years earlier, and it had been fed, watered and nurtured frequently since then. It was mid-December 2007 when I'd had my longest pregnancy to that point, but on the twelfth day we experienced our first significant loss. It was our 4th year of marriage, I had just turned 30, and my younger sister announced her 3rd child was coming the next year. It was a very difficult Christmas.
For the next five Christmases, babies or the news of babies were the focus of our gatherings. And we were still the only ones in my family without children in our Christmas photo card. By 2010, I had reached the end of my rope with infertility, I quit trying, and that year my black mood started to set in as early as Black Friday. Over the next few winters it seemed the cold weather months' frigid affect on the vibrancy of life had an equally 'blue' affect on our lives. Along with the loss of light & warmth, our personal losses began to pile up; loss of jobs, loss of community, two more pregnancy losses. It also became apparent after a few years of struggling, that Seasonal Affective Disorder was also playing a role in this dark season of life. I almost forgot I ever found joy in the Christmas season at all.
I found myself making excuses for how very little room I had in my life for the festivities I once loved dearly. Presents were clutter or basically a dollar exchange anyway. The radio played all the worst Christmas songs. My cat destroyed my Christmas decor. Christmas concerts had too many kids hyped up on sugar (and kids. period.) Yet. Somehow I inadvertently found myself still holding on to the smallest glimmer of Christmas spirit. I still found little joys in some of the season's staples. Gingerbread lattes. Hoarfrost. Watching a few select favorite Christmas movies. Baking Christmas cookies with my family. Christmas lights & decorations (every where but my own home).
The darkness could not crowd out the light!
Heart for the Holidays
I finally decided about nine years ago that I was done with winter bringing on a winter of my soul. That didn't mean it was easy, it was a choice. And I knew I needed to surround myself with reminders of what I was choosing. One of the songs I added to my Christmas playlist (which I could finally listen to again) describes how I began to feel.
"Long lay the world in sin and error pining, till He appeared and the soul felt its worth. A thrill of hope. The weary soul rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn."
I began a journey of reclaiming Christmas, my weary soul yearning for something new. It's been a little like being visited by the Christmas ghosts each year. It's been a journey of figuring out what pieces of the past I can still find joy in. I love my childhood memories of Christmas, but a lot remind me I'll never be able to replicate them. It's been a journey of figuring out how to make the Christmas in the present special for just two on the 25th. Presence over presents of course, but it's been a lot of trial & error, and we're still figuring it out. And it's a journey, trying to focus on future hope, the hope of Christ, woven through all of it. This is the point and really the only thing that matters for me. This is what ends up shifting my heart every year, no matter what challenges came up, I end up posturing my heart towards remembering all the amazing gifts that came from Christ's birth. This is what turns grinchy to gratitude, humbugs to heartfelt, and reminds me it's a wonderful life every day of the year. Because Jesus came to be with me every day, especially the hard days....even if that happens to be His birthday
With a lot of effort, this year has been my most joyful Christmas season I've had in years! I have fully embraced my Ebenezer! Not the Scrooge variety. In Hebrew, Ebenezer means “stone of help”, and with God as my anchor of hope, He has helped me rejoice in Him always! I don't entirely resonate with Scrooge, but I will borrow this line from him though, as one also transformed by spirit. "I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me."
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