Joy When The Holidays Are Tough
Photo by John Brundage
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“Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and they shall call him Emmanuel,” which means “God is with us.”
—Matthew 1:23
Where did the time go? It’s already only a week before Christmas. For some people that means joy, anticipation, decompression, warmth, fun, and bliss. But for others, that means pressure, anxiety, tension, sadness, fatigue, inadequacy, grief, and disappointment. The holidays aren’t supposed to fall into the latter category. But the fact that they’re supposed to fall into the former is exactly the reason they can hurt. The greater the hope, the greater the disappointment.
If you’re in that boat, I want you to know that Jesus understands you. If you’re in a bad place, Jesus was there first. He wants more than anything to meet you and help you there. His Christmas was not a cozy hallmark card affair. The holidays can hurt because they are a time when expectation and nostalgia crash into a cold and ruthless reality. Our childhood is gone forever, our family has problems we can’t fix, people we love are no longer with us.
Jesus could have stayed away from the hurt and messiness of our world and our lives. But he dived head first into all of it. And the saints followed him. If you feel like you can’t get everything done or that you’re letting people down, think about St. Joseph. Hand picked to be the father of Jesus, St. Joseph was undoubtedly one of the holiest and most virtuous men in history. But imagine what he must have felt when he couldn’t even find a room for his pregnant wife. Men, what lengths would you have gone to try? Women, how powerless and concerned for your child would you have felt?
If you feel disappointed or grieving, think about Jesus. The king of the universe, God himself, deserved to come to Earth in a palace, to sleep in the most comfortable bed. He didn’t even get a hotel room. The expectation crashed into a dark, dingy, manger. And this manger was in a world that had gone completely off the rails, going all the way back to Adam and Eve. A world filled with war, abuse, addiction, disease, tragedy. Nothing was going the way it was supposed to.
But in the midst of it all, here he was. Here he is. And if we understood what that means, we would jump for joy. In the meantime, we must pray and prepare. When was the last time you shouted for joy? Maybe it was while watching a game, maybe you found out wonderful news from a family member, maybe it was when you got a job promotion. Whatever it was, it gave you a small window into what Christmas meant for the world, and what his second coming will mean for us if we follow him.
We are in the home stretch of advent. Let’s not let the craziness crowd Jesus out. Practically speaking, let’s not allow it to crowd silence and prayer out. Let’s not allow it to crowd connection and quality time out. Let’s not allow it to steal our peace of mind. Let’s double down on love and joy, even if things are hard. No matter how difficult our circumstances are, nothing can take away the joy of Bethlehem. Nothing can take away Emmanuel.
John Brundage is a seminarian with the Companions of the Cross. He also writes a Substack Newsletter called Integrated Prayer.