It’s that time of year again. A season filled with parties and twinkling lights and gift giving. A time of concerts and plays and cookie exchanges. A time of fa-la-la-la-la and good cheer. Over these next few weeks, people who would ordinarily not make eye contact with strangers, will wish every passing person a “Merry Christmas.” We’ll mail out dozens of annual photo cards with smiling faces and belt out our favorite version of All I Want for Christmas.
In the midst of all this merriment are those for whom the Christmas season is not filled with cheer. For some, the holidays are downright hard and a month long season of festivity feels like an eternity. This is true for the lonely—those whose family live far away or who don’t have a place to go for Christmas. It’s true for those who’ve just endured a painful loss and can’t imagine Christmas dinner without their loved one seated at the table. The holidays are also hard for those who can’t make ends meet and can’t bear to show up at the annual office party empty-handed.
On the outside it may seem like everyone is holly and jolly, but the truth is, the holidays are hard for many.
Might the gospel have something to say to those who are hurting this holiday season? After all, isn’t that what Christmas is about? Isn’t it a celebration of the Light of the World cutting into the darkness of fallen humanity? Isn’t it about peace consuming the chaos? Isn’t it about hope for the hopeless?
While we tend to soften the harsh edges of the Christmas story, the incarnation is filled with hard circumstances. A poor teen girl learns she is to bear the Messiah by a miraculous conception and her fiancé nearly breaks things off, until an angel intervenes. The young couple travel to Bethlehem for a mandatory census just as she is about to give birth and can’t find a place to stay. With no other option, she delivers her baby among the animals in a stable. God incarnate leaves the glorious throne room of heaven, takes on human flesh, and enters a place filled with the smells of hay and the sounds of donkeys and sheep. Before long, they have to flee to Egypt because a mad-man wants the promised child dead. The sounds of sorrow echo throughout Israel as every child two and under is killed in the hopes of finding and ending the life of the One who would deliver his people.
The prophet Isaiah describes the life of this God-man, one filled with sorrow and suffering:
“For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed” (Is. 53: 2-5).
This means we have a Savior who knows and understands all our sorrows for he is the Man of Sorrows. He doesn’t just know about it; he came to bear all that we carry—all the loneliness, grief, and painful memories. The fears of not having enough. The shame of what we’ve done and what’s been done to us. And above all, he came to take away the guilt of all our sin. Jesus Christ lived the life we could not live and died the death we deserved. He was pierced, crushed, chastised, and wounded for us.
The gospel tells us that our Savior came for all those reasons that make the holiday season so hard for us. He came to bring peace and healing, redemption and hope. This means that in the midst of all that is hard, we have joy in Jesus Christ. He is our comfort in a world filled with sorrow. “…his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace” (Is. 9:6).
When everyone around us is filled with good cheer and it’s all we can do to keep the tears at bay, the very One whom we celebrate knows each of those tears. He knows what it is to grieve, to endure temptation, to face poverty, to experience rejection. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). Jesus Christ is Immanuel, God with us, which means he is present with us in all our trials and troubles. He is present with us during this holiday season. We can cry out to him and voice all those things we can’t voice anywhere else. He hears and knows and will surround us with his help and grace.
When the holidays are hard this season, let us turn our hearts to the story of the incarnation. Let us remember the story of our Savior who, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:6-8). No one understands the depths of our sorrows as the Man of Sorrows himself. And only he has done something about it.
While the Christmas season may be hard, it is not without joy. May our tears mingle with songs of joy as we celebrate the birth of our Savior.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
