The Sacred Sorrow of Christmas

I love Christmas. I keep Christmas CDs in my car year-round and get obnoxiously happy when Walmart and Hobby Lobby put Christmas decorations out while we are still in triple-digit temperatures. I am the female version of Buddy the Elf and give fair warning to anyone who would like to unfollow me on social media from November to February. I repeat, I love Christmas.

I am well aware, particularly in my training as a mental health therapist, that Christmas is not experienced this way by everyone. Part of the reason I have the privilege of enjoying Christmas is because I have had positive Christmas experiences. I know this is a privilege, and thus, I don’t share to boast. Instead, I share it to point out how very surprising it has been to have a sort of “sacred sorrow” creeping into my Christmas experience over the past several years. Sadness has been a strange addition to my usual holiday cheer.

Being a Mother changes things like Christmas. It changes it in all the happy ways like adding to the magic, creating and renewing fun traditions, and finding secret joy when the toys of your youth come back in vogue and you can buy your kid something like an Etch-A-Sketch. However, as fun as all this is, I think being a mother has also changed the spiritual side of Christmas for me. I know now what it means to have a baby, to raise a child, and to know the pain that comes with your heart is walking around outside your body. It makes me see that babe in the manger very differently.

Years ago, when The Passion of the Christ came to theaters, I was floored by the experience. Seeing Christ’s life and sacrifice on the big screen in such intimate detail left an impression I will not forget. But, as anti-spiritual as it may sound, you know what scene really wrenched my heart? It was the one of Jesus as a child. In this scene, Mary is watching from a distance as a beaten and bloodied Jesus stumbles and falls, the cross he is carrying crashing down on his thorn-bedecked brow. As he falls, she flashes back to a memory from his childhood. A young Jesus is running up the stairs. He trips, and she runs to comfort him. The present scene and her memory flash back and forth, her youthful face running toward the child Jesus and her stricken and lined one toward her weak and bloodied adult son. She fights through the crowd to steady him, saying simply, “I’m here.” It broke me as a believer, and it broke me as a mom.

Dear readers, the birth of Christ is an incredible thing. An amazing thing. An event that fulfilled Scripture and sent the angels in heaven into riotous rejoicing. But it is also the come-to-earth reality of what had to be done to attend to our sin. The arrival of that babe in a manger is a glorious miracle. But it was also the beginning of a brutal and earth-shaking journey to the cross, where a perfect Lord gave up his spirit to spare us the fate we had earned. As we celebrate his birth at Christmas, we acknowledge the beginning of that journey, which led the God we love to a brutal death. That baby in the manger was born and died because of us. Oh, how I wish it hadn’t needed to be so.

I don’t share these thoughts to make any of us feel guilty. And I certainly don’t offer them to bum us out on Christmas. Quite the contrary. I hope to offer the comfort that some of the sadness you may encounter at Christmas actually comes from the beautiful place in your spirit that is deeply in love with God. Sadness at Christmas is not a bad thing. It may, in fact, be worship.

And so, for this Mama, Christmas now means choosing to embrace the “sacred sorrow” that has been sneaking up on me. I now take comfort in the twinges of sadness, the moments of reflection, and the general feeling that Christmas is supposed to be about more than gifts and lights and festivities. I take comfort, and I encourage you to take comfort, too,  because I believe those feelings may be the spirit in us loving and honoring all the Christ babe means.

I love Christmas. I suspect that I will always love Christmas for its inherent joy and celebration. But I am also going to allow myself the freedom for Christmas to become what God needs it to be for me. As we journey together in the Christmases ahead, I will take my cue from Mary and simply say, I’m here. I’m here for it all.

Anne Rulo is an author, speaker, professional counselor, marriage and family therapist and veteran coach’s wife. She and her husband Tim have two children and are passionate about reaching people for Christ and sharing information on coaching, marriage, family, and mental health. Read more from Anne at www.annerulo.com.

Photograph © Greyson Joralemon, used with permission