I once read about a mother who tragically lost a child, and every Christmas after hid in bed, leaving her husband and other children to holiday without her. 

I read this after the loss of our firstborn, and I felt so much empathy for this grieving mother. Traumatic loss can trigger staggering emotions on what used to be some of the happiest of days.

I’m sure she was not the only one who found it difficult to cope with a holiday without the presence of a loved one. 

And death is not the only loss that can shadow the holiday season. Financial instability, loss of community, friendship, family unity, or health are other real issues that can come more to the forefront at Christmas time. 

Yet, perhaps we find loss and grief incompatible with Christmas because we are approaching Christmas the wrong way. 

What if Christmas was as much about darkness and death as it is about light and hope? What if our grief isn’t a distraction from the season but something that should be given a voice during the holidays? 

We’ve discussed Christmas as being too consumeristic in our culture ad nauseam. But I wonder if the main issue isn’t whether or not we give gifts to each other but whether we are cultivating the right culture. 

We’ve watched our fair share of Christmas movies. And it’s striking to me how many of them are full of fluffy emotive storylines that brush by deep grief and grasp at Santa as the belief that will save us all. They are fun movies, but hardly something to get you through a dark season. 

A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, does something different. Here we have a story well-laced with poverty, disappointed love, tragic life choices, trauma, and the ghost of Marley, who died an unhappy death after an unhappy life. And, yet, we are told there is hope for us yet. Hope is given in the form of second chances even after great loss, the belief that we can learn how to find joy in living, in generosity, and in love, and that we can find hope despite life’s hardships.

The book deals with a future glimpse of the Cratchit family’s quiet celebration of Christmas without Tiny Tim. The family’s sorrowful togetherness in that potential future is one of the moving parts of the book – especially for those of us who have lost a child. 

But while Tiny Tim is saved, the book doesn’t shy away from the fact that not all were. For example, Scrooge’s sister died an early death. Scrooge never got to go back and fix his love relationship. And he can’t relive the years he wasted in cold drudgery and misery. His Christmas hope doesn’t erase his past sins or sorrows but instead acknowledges them.

Dickens wrote this book in the Victorian tradition of Christmas Eve ghost stories. It’s an old tradition, nearly forgotten, that seems even ridiculous compared to our more saccharine forms of Christmas storytelling now. Why think of ghosts on a happy holiday eve? 

Some have argued this tradition lasted long because the holidays naturally brought up the topic of those already gone before us, and then ghost stories naturally followed. 

These traditions can seem macabre to us now. But I wonder if they have something we’ve now lost — the ability to incorporate life’s joys and sorrows into the holiday season. 

Perhaps if we stopped believing that the Christmas season was all candy cane and cookies, but also funerals and waiting for when death is defeated, we wouldn’t be so tempted to throw the covers over our heads when we are in a season of loss and the holidays roll around again.

There is no right way to grieve, and there is no right way to get through the holidays, especially after great loss. But I also believe that the holidays will only be rich in meaning when it means something wider than toys and cookies and when sorrow is allowed just as much a part of the holiday season as joy. 

When we think of the birth of Christ, we see the beginning of our celebration that happens in grateful wonder, the bright terrifying light of angels, the gifts of wise men, and we also see a young poverty-stricken couple likely living under the hostile scrutiny of their neighbors. We see Herod violently killing toddlers and infants, and we see a young family fleeing for their lives into Egypt. It was all part of the promised first years of the Christ child, born to us. 

Jesus was truly a bright light in a dark world. 

So if this Christmas you feel the weight of various sorrows, know that sorrow has a place in the Christmas season. Not because sorrow and sadness are the ultimate messages of Christmas but because Christmas hope first met us in our sorrow and darkness. 

And it will continue to do. 

No matter how glad or sad, happy or bitter, grieving or rejoicing you find yourself this Christmas, your lived experiences are part of your Christmas season. I pray you’ll give your story room to breathe this season so that you can again remember our true Christmas Hope.