Broken hearted Christmas

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Christmas Eve was spent with a friend and family in the hospital, and late in the evening, we were crying, comforting, and grieving the loss of a loved one. On Christmas Day, what C.S. Lewis said in his book ‘A Grief Observed’ seemed real and true: “For the greater the love, the greater the grief, and the stronger the faith, the more savagely will Satan storm its fortress.”

 

2023 and 2022 were similar. In 2022, there was the loss of a baby in the womb of a close family friend and the loss of the mother of another friend. As I grow older, the memories of Christmas from yesteryears seem distant. Carols, cakes, celebrations, and gifts are still there but do not seem to make as much sense as they did then. Is it my ageing heart and overly sensitive soul, or is it a season given to us that we must endure and walk through?

 

But then, for many, Christmas is not about cakes and celebrations. Yesterday, on Christmas Eve, Ukraine was bombed again. People in Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, and Syria, and those affected by the car bombing in Germany, are likely going through a Christmas with broken hearts. 

 

Amid the carols, cakes, celebrations, and gifts, we tend to forget that the gift given to us did not come amidst such joys. A tyrannical ruler who wanted a census pushed a young couple with a pregnant mother onto the road, forcing them to deliver their baby in a cattle shed. 

 

Were the first and second birthdays of that baby filled with celebrations? Or were they marked by living under the fear of tyrannical and despotic rulers who wanted to kill the child, moving from place to place as refugees?

 

According to Coptic church traditions, when Jesus and His parents took refuge in Egypt (where King Herod could exert no political power and, consequently, would not be able to harm baby Jesus), they moved locations very frequently. It is believed that they kept moving from place to place (26 locations, according to tradition) to avoid the reach of Herod’s spies. One wonders, even if they stayed at only a few locations, who would have provided support for them as these young parents and the baby moved from place to place.


The Christmas we celebrate today came out of the lives of broken and fearful hearts—the hearts of parents who gave birth to this gift. Would those parents have felt fear, like the grief some of us are feeling these days? 


C.S. Lewis says, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.” (A Grief Observed)

 

This opens my heart to a truth: Christmases with broken hearts are okay! Maybe broken hearts make Christmas more meaningful. That is when “God With Us” makes more sense. The Everlasting Father's embrace becomes meaningful, and the broken become the blessed. 

 









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