Last year on the Monday night before Christmas we gathered in the back of the congregation’s Auditorium to honor and pay attention to the difficult mixture of feelings this time of year can bring. We gathered in a circle to be with one another. We brought mementos of the loved ones we were missing. Lit candles for the people in our minds and hearts. We spent time together to recognize in an intentional way that grief and pain persist even when the world is full of bright lights and merry messages. This is the purpose of a Longest Night service, to recognize the juxtaposition of multiple feelings that can exist alongside and overlapping each other. To recognize, sit with, and unpack these experiences is the purpose behind offering this service. In it, I hope you will find some peace with whatever feelings you have running against the prevailing messages around us.
This congregation’s Grief Support Circle chose to open up their meeting that night to the wider congregation & community. They offered a Blue Christmas service for the people who are grieving and struggling this time of year. It was the first time I had heard of a Longest Night service, often also called Blue Christmas, and I think it was the first time this congregation had hosted an observance like this. In the words of Rev. Melanie Carroll, a Blue Christmas service:
“is somewhere to come if, despite all the decorations, the cards, the music playing in the shops, the concerts and parties and the advertisers who want you to believe that you can buy wonderful – you don’t really feel very much like celebrating. Somewhere to come if the idea that a Merry Little Christmas is all you need for your troubles to be miles away has a decidedly hollow ring to it1.”
This sort of observance is called one of two things held around the same time. As the Longest Night, it refers to and may be held on the Winter Solstice, when the nights are longest and darkest, and the northern hemisphere is about to tilt back into the light of summer. When called Blue Christmas, as it is by congregations in many Protestant traditions, it’s held on the last Sunday of Advent, right before Christmas. Regardless of the day, regardless of the name, both these observances serve to encounter a paradox: that grief and pain can still be a part of our lives even in the midst of cheerful holidays. If Christmas is a meaningful holiday for you or your loved ones – or even for other people in your community or country – you might feel a kind of obligation to be happy during this time of year, no matter what is actually going on in your life. While some people might embrace the season as a wanted relief and distraction from heavier feelings, this is by no means a universal experience. For this reason, making time to take stock of our emotions and experiences can be important.
Beneath the face of it, there are all kinds of reasons this time of year can be difficult. We could already be grieving loss. We could be distant from the people or places we love. When this season arrives, we may be confronted with the fact that we can’t celebrate with the people whose company we cherish. We may be held apart from our loved ones by death, illness, or separation. In 2014, the National Alliance for Mental Illness (known as NAMI) published a study that reported 64% of people surveyed who already experienced mental illness said that the winter holiday season worsened their condition to some degree2. In a related article, an editor for NAMI wrote that:
“These feelings can easily be exacerbated by stressors, many of which are experienced in this season alone. Many of us wish—or feel obligated to—host holiday parties, whilst being cajoled into attending those of family, friends and acquaintances. Decorations are beautiful, but someone has to put them up. Not to be forgotten are visits with family members who are only seen once or twice a year, and fighting the crowds to find that perfect gift. All of which is compressed into a four-to-six-week block of time3.”
As Melanie Carroll writes, we “can feel edged out and forgotten as everyone else seems caught up in the mad frenzy of their own preparations and celebrations4”. We can feel doubly wrong for even entertaining the fact that we’re not as merry and bright as everyone else. In a season of pronounced displays of joy, it can be all too easy to compare our own lives to everybody else’s display. Caught in this comparison we can easily be led to doubt or ignore our own experiences.
And while we can feel any of these sources of disconnect in any given year, December 2020 offers fresh sources of pain and discomfort. Those of us who are used to celebrating with friends and family cannot do so in the ways we like. We may be missing out on cherished traditions. We may be deprived of the connection that usually helps us through grief, pain, or loneliness. Or yet, we may be faced with the incongruity of watching people celebrate, travel, and gather together despite a global pandemic. We may face doubt that we are doing the right thing by staying home, or that our consideration for our own and others’ wellbeing even matters.
Wrapped up in a conflict between expectation and reality, we can easily feel ungrounded. And in this year among all others, we can easily feel isolated. The purpose then of honoring the Longest Night or Blue Christmas, is to be present with the emotions we might otherwise brush aside, or feel coerced to cover up. It is a time to do this not in isolation, but together in recognizing that we are never alone in these feelings. It is the opportunity to ask for care during an especially hard season. It is the opportunity to care for one another. It is an observance of simultaneity. On the one hand, here we observe that pain can and does exist alongside joy and merriment. There is a more complicated reality that underlies all of this – that we can and do feel joy and grief at the same time during this season, or any other season. On the other hand, here we observe that pain, grief, and all other feelings are both incredibly present and also impermanent. To recognize they are present is to pay attention to the way our feelings of sorrow impact our lives. To become mindful of their sources, effects, and consequences. To recognize that they are impermanent is to be mindful that these share a quality with all existence. That like all other things, they emerge, subside, and transform. As we heard Jan Richardson’s words in our second reading:
“Believe me when I tell you this blessing will reach you even if you have not light enough to read it; it will find you even though you cannot see it coming…. This is the night when you can trust that any direction you go, you will be walking toward the dawn5.”
In honoring the Longest Night, we honor this presence and impermanence together. We acknowledge that we are not alone in our experiences, and don’t have to be. As we move from the time of this service into the rest of our lives, how will we ask for the care we need? How will we be present with the contents of our experiences, no matter how incongruent? Maybe this looks like asking for support, or asking for space and understanding. Maybe it looks like reaching out to one of our Pastoral Care associates for the first time. Maybe this looks like attending one of the Grief Support Circle’s gatherings.
And how will we be attentive to the care of other people in our community? Maybe you are part of our call-tree checking in with friends and members of the congregation. Maybe you’re keeping in touch with the people you talked to in coffee hour, sat next to in service, attended classes or small groups with. All of these practices are vital to the health of our community, and may be doubly important during this season.
The contents of our lives are often filled with contradiction and incongruity. Some seasons make this more apparent, but we don’t have to sit alone with this realization. If this season has been a long one for you, may you find some comfort here and in the care of your community. If you have care to extend to others, may you do so. Despite physical distance, we can still be present with one another and our experiences. May we find peace and bring peace in recognition of this.
1. Melanie Carroll, “A Blue Christmas Service: If You’re Hurting at Christmas,” Sacraparental: Social Justice & Spirituality for Parents & Kids, December 23, 2014, http://sacraparental.com/2014/12/23/a-blue-christmas-service-if-youre-hurting-at-christmas/
2. National Alliance on Mental Illness, “Mental Health and the Holiday Blues,” November 19, 2014, https://www.nami.org/press-releases/mental-health-and-the-holiday-blues/
3. National Alliance on Mental Illness, “Beat Back the Holiday Blues,” November 22, 2013, https://www.nami.org/mental-illness/beat-back-the-holiday-blues/
4. Carroll
5. Jan Richardson, “Winter Solstice: Blessing for the Longest Night,” The Advent Door: Entering a Contemplative Christmas, December 19, 2011, https://adventdoor.com/2011/12/19/winter-solstice-blessing-for-the-longest-night/