It’s Always Christmas at Christmas, Even When Things Don’t Feel Quite Right
It is Christmas time. Sometimes we have to spend these days in the hospital. Sometimes in bed, with the thermometer and piles of medicines. Sometimes we have to spend these days away from home. Or in solitude. Sometimes we have to spend these days under the pain of depression, and the joy around us repels us, makes us feel even further away from the real world. Sometimes we have to work, or travel, or the broken-down car prevents us from arriving on time for dinner, or a friend with a serious problem needs our presence at such an important time. Sometimes we have just been dumped by a girlfriend, sometimes it bothers us to share a table with the new faces of the extended family, sometimes it hurts us to see up close the small or big miseries that, as everywhere, appear amongst those closest to us.
Sometimes the soul is asleep and we neither pray nor are moved to contemplate the Nativity Scene, sometimes the old carols make us too sad, and no longer warm our hearts. Sometimes we are too focused on the fact that in a few days something important will happen at work. Sometimes even the joyful cries of children may annoy us, make us want to run away from the noise and happiness of others.
Sometimes we don’t manage to feel quite right at Christmas, sometimes the major days of these celebrations pass us by in a hurry, and sometimes time passes so slowly that even the rituals we used to enjoy are tiring. Sometimes our body gives off signs that it is not quite well, sometimes the doctor has forbidden us to go near Christmas delicacies, and sometimes a simple domestic malfunction ruins our Christmas peace.
Sometimes you have to hide in your room and cry because it’s hard to see for the first time how a father or grandfather doesn’t remember what they said just a minute ago, or they don’t even know who we are, sometimes you don’t feel like talking and everyone wants to give you conversation, and sometimes even the most harmless joke at the table eats away at you and scratches at your soul.
Sometimes the years and days weigh you down, sometimes you would like to be older to gain independence, sometimes your country is a totalitarian cage and it is hard to celebrate, and other times you simply have to do it on the sly because radicalism has settled around you. Sometimes there is no money and austerity is so extreme that images of yesterday’s lavish parties keep popping up in your imagination, sometimes you are ashamed of the nonsense you say after three glasses of wine, and sometimes you miss all the family board games because your head is so many miles away.
Sometimes you miss too much the one who is not there, sometimes you feel that you lack the peace that everyone seems to overflow with these days, sometimes you look at the sky searching for God and do not find him, and sometimes you think that nothing will ever be like in the bright days of yesteryear. Sometimes you dress listlessly out of sheer apathy and condition your celebration to fail, sometimes you cook and burn your turkey or homemade Christmas treats, sometimes you don’t find any Christmas memes funny, and sometimes you miss Capra movies on modern television.
Sometimes Christmas seems to have forgotten to return to your home, sometimes the sky bursts into rain and there is no more snow, sometimes someone scolds you unfairly on Christmas Day. Sometimes the bells of your home are unable to ring, sometimes not even the books want to keep you company, sometimes you wish, in short, that this year there was no Christmas.
I’m sure that at least some of these things have happened to you, and believe me I understand you, because I’ve felt like that too. And yet, the great miracle of these days is that it doesn’t matter what happens around us, what our heart bleeds, the loneliness we may endure. It is Christmas, God becomes a Child in Bethlehem, and because He is a child, daring, funny, and reckless, He will come to your heart and make a place for Himself, accommodating Himself to your circumstances. That’s why it’s always, always Christmas when Christmas comes. Thanks be to God.
Merry Christmas to my friends and readers of The American Spectator.
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