Have Yourself a Bittersweet Christmas

the Season of "And-ness"

Photo by Matteo Raw on Unsplash

This last Sunday we lit the “joy” candle on our advent wreath—for those of you keeping score at home, that brings us up to: peace, hope, and joy (at least if you’re Lutheran.) During Sunday dinners I’ve been trying to engage my kids in a discussion of the advent candles. I’m usually met with a fair bit of resistance, as my sons prefer to talk about Minecraft or some other video game they want. But last night, my 10-year-old, T, was surprisingly animated on the topic of joy.

While most dictionaries define joy as being synonymous with delight, pleasure, or happiness, I can’t stop thinking about how journalist Jennifer Senior talks about joy in her book, All Joy and No Fun: The Paradox of Modern Parenting (a great read, BTW.) After conducting many interviews with parents, Senior seems to settle on the idea that joy is happiness + meaning. Riding a rollercoaster or watching The Bachelor might make you temporarily happy, but they probably won’t induce joy. Whereas activities like training for a marathon, volunteering, or making something with your hands, or parenting are not always fun in the moment, but ultimately they produce both meaning and happiness.

My son, T, seemed to grasp this instinctively. His newest obsession is fishing, an activity he finds joyful because he wants to catch fish to contribute to the family. I see in both of my pre-teen sons an increasing desire for mastery and independence; they are practicing skills that are often frustrating and sometimes scary (as when we took a blacksmithing class last August) but ultimately meaningful.

Our pop cultural understanding of Christmas focuses so much on sweetness and schmaltz, on a shallow sense of happiness rather than joy. It’s like gorging yourself on sugary desserts. I see this in the deluge of Hallmark movies. Compare even your best Lindsay Lohan/Netflix collab with older takes on Christmas like A Christmas Carol, It’s a Wonderful Life, and even Die Hard. What do these stories have in common? They’re DARK AF. Like death and regret and feeling failed by your community dark.

As I’ve written about before, our culture is bad at dealing with suffering. We tend to either try to ignore it or to pretend we can fix everything. It’s hard for us to accept pain as a part of life. A Christmas that emphasizes merriment and happiness to the exclusion of all other feelings may seem like a way to keep darkness at bay, but, in my experience, it’s just a recipe for loneliness. Because the antidote to suffering is not pretending it’s not happening, it’s realizing you are never alone in your suffering.

This Christmas is the first one since my brother, Karl, died. Grief comes in waves, most unpredictably. I imagine this Christmas will be a dark one for many in my family. Maybe you, too, will be missing someone this holiday. One of the things grief has shown me is what I call the and-ness of life: life is beautiful and horrible, funny and sad; it’s absurd and it makes sense. In this season of anticipation, we can hold both the darkness and the light, the sweet and the bitter, the loss and the joy.

If you’re lonely or feeling loss this Christmas, if it feels like everyone else is snuggled up cozy with their loved ones except for you, know that you are not alone. I hope that you’re able to sit with both the joy and the pain this season brings.

Need a soundtrack to cry to? I made this playlist on Spotify:

We’re off next week for Christmas, but I may just pop into your inbox with a little surprise between now and the new year.

In the meantime, wishing you peace and presence this holiday season.

BONUS MATERIALS:

• your annual reminder that A Muppet Christmas Carol is THE BEST Christmas movie

• I already have too many streaming subscriptions, but AT SOME POINT I will absolutely watch this Hallmark movie parody