Bad News/Good News: Bad News at “the Most Wonderful Time of the Year”

I have been conspicuously silent on the blog this week. There’s a reason for that. On Sunday, I was taking my daughter to a ballet recital and got into a car accident. Everybody walked away from the accident, but our minivan (which we bought only three months ago) was totaled. I didn’t expect a car accident to shake me up as much as it did, but it was Tuesday before I even began to shake the nausea, depression, and mental confusion.

Bad news at Christmastime. Guys, it’s a thing. I know it’s been a major thing in my life to the point that the positive Christmas anticipation I feel is always accompanied by the queasy-stomach feeling, “What will go wrong this time?” Christmas has been a time in my past of family fights and disappointments, of poverty, of aloneness. One year, we moved at Christmastime, which was hopeful but also full of stress. My youngest baby was born at Christmastime–a special memory that somewhat redeems the season for me, but also a stressful time.

We see this sparkly, polished Christmas image in our commercials and movies. We have cultural reinforcement over and over again that this time of the year is supposed to be the most wonderful time of the year. We set our expectations so very high, and so often our expectations are dashed. Family members get together and end up arguing or sitting in sullen silence. The Christmas dinner doesn’t turn out. The kids come home from college and then spend more time with their friends than mom and dad. Christmas memories of past holiday family dysfunction bring up pain and depression.

And then there’s the really bad news that emerges. My Dad went into hospice a couple of years ago right before Christmas. Many elderly adults die around the holidays. Frightening medical diagnoses are given. People have mental health break-downs. Marriages fall apart. The cops get called for domestic violence. Sometimes children die right before Christmas (this happened to a family I knew two years ago). At these times–and for many years after–our hearts are broken.

When a terrible event happens at Christmastime, it seems even more traumatic than other times of the year. Because our expectations are set so high, we feel particularly sad and empty. The time of the year that “should” be filled with joy is instead filled with sadness.

But what if we have it all backwards? What if Christmas is less telling us that we need to have a splendid, glorious, picture-perfect holiday, but is instead telling us that since our world and our lives are not picture-perfect, there is such a person as God who became human to come be with us? What if Christmas is telling us that all the plastic smiles we’re supposed to plant on our faces at Christmas so we can pretend everything is perfect and fine, that those smiles are completely unnecessary? What if Christmas is telling us that we can be real with the tears and the sorrow, that we can tell the truth about how hard it can be to walk through this broken world? What if Christmas is telling us that God cares about us so much that He was willing to be born to a poor peasant family, to be diapered, to be laid in a feeding trough? That He was willing to fully lean into the broken mess of our world so that we would not be alone with our pain and sorrow?

Man. I tell you, when I think about it like that, it just gets me. I mean, God totally could have just stayed in heaven with all the picture-perfect splendid stuff. He could have insisted on the polish and glitz. He could have refused to mix with us messed-up, broken people. Instead, He chose to be dirty and poor and to exist in the body of a helpless baby. He really, really loves us. I am in awe of that.

So this year and every year, even if everybody fights around the Christmas tree and the ham gets burned…or worse, even if you spend Christmas in a mental health ward, even if someone you love dies on Christmas, even if you spend Christmas physically alone…you are not alone! Not now, not ever again! Because Jesus has come for you!

Surely the righteous will never be shaken;
    they will be remembered forever.
They will have no fear of bad news;
    their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord.
Their hearts are secure, they will have no fear;
    in the end they will look in triumph on their foes.
They have freely scattered their gifts to the poor,
    their righteousness endures forever;
    their horn will be lifted high in honor.–Psalm 112:6-9, NIV

Psalm 112 is not telling us that the righteous will never have bad news. It’s telling us that because we have God, we don’t have to ultimately be afraid of bad news. We can experience peace in knowing that good will prevail and evil and brokenness will end one day.

Better, still,

“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).–Matthew 1:23

There is hope. God is with us.

Once there was only dark. You ask me, the light’s winning.–Rust Cohle, True Detective

Have you experienced some terrible events at Christmas? What helped you to get through these traumas? Has faith helped you in any way?

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