Making Peace with Christmas

Christmas confuses me.

From all the songs that consume nearly every radio station from Thanksgiving on, I've concluded that it's supposed to be white. (I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas). And romantic. (All I Want for Christmas is You!) It's the most wonderful time of the year! It's the happiest time of year. We want everyone to be home for Christmas. Have a holly-jolly Christmas!

It's not only the songs that tell us what the season is supposed to entail, but even the commercials for products entice us.

"Get into the holiday spirit with Dunkin Donut lattes!"

What is this holiday spirit? And how is a latte going to help me get there? And do I even want to be "in the spirit"?

The mail arrives and there's a flyer for a craft store that's having a Christmas Blowout.

I imagine tree ornaments, elves, bells and reindeer all exploding into bits.

Christmas in America confuses me.

"I'm not sure I like it," I told a friend and she tried to analyze why I had a bah-humbug attitude. To another friend I admitted that Christmas was overly-commercialized and that if I heard another peppy song about bells and sleighs and a snowman named Frosty, I might just scream something "not in the spirit".

If the spirit is overspending or seeking out the perfect gift, or feeling frantic from a busy calendar, or being envious of somebody's Martha Stewart table setting, do I want it? Why would I embrace this?

But I have. And people do.

People not only embrace it, but get flustered over it all. It's too much. There are articles out there written about reducing your stress during the holiday season. Patricia Schaefer advises us: "Don't let holiday stress spoil this joyful time of the year. Before you find yourself knee deep in turkey and dressing, holiday parties, and shopping, shopping, and even more shopping, heed these tips for reducing holiday stress."

We have to be the only species on earth that create a season that promises joy, cheer, and fun and then need to help ourselves calm down and not get overly stressed.

And through it all, we are supposed to be merry.

I'm not sure why we think that Christmas is this magical time when suddenly all should turn well and be happy. I think we have made too much over the holiday and enlarged it so big that there is no way it can ever fulfill our expectations. Christmas originated as a day chosen to recall and remember the birth of Jesus Christ. That's awesome when you stop and think about God coming down to measly ol' earth as a baby to be among us. Yet we have taken what happened on that silent night and made it into everything from Secret Santas to Mommy kissing Santa to expecting world peace. We can't even get along with our own families.

We place all this pressure on ourselves and scurry around and cram all these parties and activities into this one month.

We then complain that we're too busy. When we have brought it all on ourselves.

We get so bogged down that some of us say we want to go back to simplicity. Then we are looked upon as "evil" for not having a tree or decorating or for not wanting to attend every church choir performance or for not traveling to Bermuda or for not buying our 16 year old that Lexus that is advertised on every TV station.

Christmas is a time of great sorrow and regrets for many. It brings out the loneliness and fear. People compare their lives with others. No one seems to match up to how he or she thinks he or she should be. And when you have had a loved one die, the absence of that loved one seems to be magnified in December.

Christmas is a time when we recognize that we need to be less self-absorbed. So we guilt ourselves into giving to charities. We think of people we never give a thought to the rest of the year--those society calls, the "less fortunate". We scramble our pennies together to toss into the Salvation Army's kettle before rushing into Walmart in hopes that we can find just what our children want.

So perhaps it's not that I don't like Christmas, I don't like what we have done to Christmas in America. I know we can't and won't go back to the 1930s and 1940s, the era of our parents and grandparents. And it's not just because our children want those electronic games and toys and would never be content with the red wagon or puzzle of days gone by, it's also because society has pulled us along and we, as adults can't go back.

There has to be a balance between being exhausted and not caring. And being at peace with what you choose and how you choose to spend this birthday remembrance of the Son of God.

If you find it, please let me know how it's done.

Grief at Christmas: Finding that Simple Quiet

Hang on, it’s begun. I heard my first Christmas carol on the radio two weeks before Thanksgiving and neighbors, as well as store owners, must have heard it, too. Lights and tinsel are popping up everywhere. The holidays. Watch out. I recall being in Burma (back when we called it Burma) and the simple Christmas Eve with communion. There was a loaf of bread and a chipped glass of wine inside a modest church, no blaring music about Santa, not a spruced-up fir in sight.

“What’s wrong with her?” others whisper as they joyfully join in the carols and stand in line at Target to purchase ornaments for the tree. “It’s a season to celebrate, to sing, to eat, to decorate the house, and to be happy with your family. Get with it!”

That’s the problem. Many can’t. Many Americans are unable to embrace good cheer and lift their glasses to festivities with family and friends. The holidays, for many, are a sobering time, a time of sorrow, of joy-less-ness, of memories of what used to be and what is not now.

It’s not that we don’t want to celebrate, it’s that our naivety has vanished; our eyes have been opened. For me it came when my four-year-old son was presented with an abundance of gifts at the hospital. Generous givers entered his room and the rooms of other sick little boys and girls on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. They handed out toys. If only, I thought as my weak child opened each gift, one of these gifts was health.

Daniel died six weeks later. The next Christmas I had no desire to get excited about much of anything. The memory of his thin body injected with medicine, seated on the sterile bed opening gifts was just too painful.

I had to buy gifts though; I had three children who had each given me lists. One afternoon, I reluctantly wandered into a store and was drawn to a small porcelain manager scene, a broken one. Someone had glued it; the line of glue was right above the donkey’s ear. Feeling it was symbolic of my new life, I bought it. I would start a new tradition. This broken and repaired scene with Mary, Joseph, Jesus and the donkey would be my new decoration in memory of my son.

Years later, I was able to find a morsel of hope in a few Christmas hymns as I realized that the season was, of course, not about lights or parties at all. Those had the potential to steal from the season, making one feel that if her calendar wasn’t filled with party invites, she was unable or unworthy to enjoy the meaning of Christmas.

I held my decoration and rubbed my finger over the thin broken line. As I did, I felt the brokenness from my own heart. A baby born in a manager came into the world to heal that crevice, and offer peace, love, salvation, and hope. Why did our society let all the noise of commercialism get in the way of that simple, and yet very profound message?

“I am sometimes asked how I get through the holidays now,” a parent whose son died wrote to me. “Do I ever feel the Christmas Spirit these days? And after ten long years, I can finally say that the Christmas Spirit somehow always finds me. It might only l last a little while, but it’s there.”

May our grief open our eyes and hearts to reflect on that first manager scene when hope was born. May we find time to ponder, to listen, and to rest in the quiet. As we continue to miss loved ones, may we pray for strength to reach out to those around us who have lost hope so that they can experience even a little while of the Christmas Spirit.




~*~*~*
Alice J. Wisler lives in Durham. Her new book on grief and loss is Getting Out of Bed in the Morning (Leafwood Publishers). Read more at her blog: http://www.alicewisler.blogspot.com/

Update on the Sandy Hook Comfort Project: What does it mean to lose a child to death?

The outpouring for the families in grief and loss from the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, CT has been amazing. People are eager to donate books as an act of love to those mourning the loss of loved ones.

Originally the plan was to send a book (Getting Out of Bed in the Morning: Reflections of Comfort in Heartache) to Sandy Hook for each family who had been affected by the tragedy in the loss of a child--young (student) or adult (teacher). That was a meaningful act of comfort, and thanks to each of you, that goal has been accomplished!

When I read again the message from Lisa Schorp (the woman with the vision who posted on my Facebook page last Saturday), I noted that she said it would be great to be able to send copies of my book not only to the families at Sandy Hook Elementary School who lost a loved one, but to all the families. I suppose I overlooked that part of her message because it seemed too big a goal.

This project has morphed. That is amazing to me. Thanks to the generous donations that have come from all over the USA and Canada, we can send more books. The local churches in Sandy Hook can use copies of Getting Out of Bed in the Morning for their libraries and others in the devastated community can benefit from a book on hope and healing in the midst of loss.

When do we send this gift of love? Although the media is consumed with reports of what is going on now in the Newton community, we know from past experiences that the "hype" will soon dissipate. Humans are like that. We tend to move from one news-breaking event to another.

But the families who lost loved ones are only at the beginning of their journeys . . . When a child dies, the world stops for a parent. The first weeks, even months, are like living in a fog. When that anesthesia wears off, the reality kicks in.

My child is gone. He is not coming back.

Ever.

Parents need help and support for the rest of their lives. I continue to cherish those who have walked this bereavement trail with me. It's been fifteen years since my son Daniel's death and I still yearn for his smile and hug.

Right now we plan to send the books after the first of next year.

Here is what we are looking at:

1. An autographed book with the name of each child who died for the child's family

2. One of my Songs from Heaven empathy cards with each book

3. A letter with the names and hometowns of each of the donors (that would be you all) for each family

Thank you, each one, for your donations to this Sandy Hook Comfort Project.

If others would like to donate, click on this link and scroll to the end of the post.

Christmas Letter from a Needy Author

Hi, Readers,

As we draw closer to Christmas, I wanted to share with you my letter to Santa.


Christmas Letter from a Needy Author

Dear Santa,
I've baked you extra sugar cookies and put them on a tray
hoping you'll deliver sacks of my novels Christmas day
I really want my books purchased by folks far and wide
my readership to grow, that many will have at their side
copies of Rain Song, How Sweet It Is, Hatteras Girl, too
A Wedding Invitation includes a recipe for beef stew.

So Santa, fill those empty places underneath the tree
with fun, quirky, southern fiction created all by me!
Faces dazzled, gratitude wide, such a joyful sight
when folks receive gifts they'll read long into the night!
This is my Christmas wish, this is my shameless prayer,
Get busy, Santa, help this author from pulling out her hair.

~ by Alice J. Wisler

Christmas Blah Revisited

Christmas 2010
~ Alice J. Wisler

Another Christmas. Here I go again . . .

Gearing up to this season, there were the nuisances from living (basically, things not going how I wished they would) that many of us face. I’ve learned to adapt to most of those because I’ve had lots of years of living to adapt!

Yet, what got to me was that feeling of apathy as I set out to do the inevitable—fight the crowds at Christmas shopping. I felt lifeless. Joyless.

What’s wrong with me? Why do I feel so ho-hum this Christmas?

The songs on the radio didn’t help. I couldn’t get excited over hoping for a white Christmas of wondering what Santa would bring me from his sleigh of goodies. And that was even after I realized he had to bring me something; I’ve been pretty good this year.

I decided that I needed to combat this mood with gratitude, so I counted my blessings. I have so many, including five kinds of tea in the pantry and a computer that works, and is currently, virus-free. With kids and a husband who love me, what was the problem?

When Mariah Carey sang, "All I want for Christmas is you," the words stuck, lodging in my heart.

Of course. I was missing my son, Daniel, and the desire to have him here, was heavy. Without his mother’s permission, Daniel would spend another Christmas in Heaven.

Putting on a pair of earrings and a scarf I love in hopes that they would make me feel festive, I set out to shop. With so many decisions to make, I took my time, the lump of blahness still filling my heart like the lumps of coal the naughty kids are threatened with.

It was while standing at the boxed chocolate that one word came to me. Write. I teach writing through grief and what amazes me, is that even after all these years since my son’s death, I sometimes forget that I need writing to help me cope.

Just knowing how helpful and healing writing is for my soul, I smiled, grateful that once this shopping ordeal ended, I could slip behind my computer and pour out my sadness.

Yes, I was missing Daniel. Yes, it has been thirteen years since he breathed his last. And, no, Christmas will never be complete without him here.

However. I typed that word really big. In spite of it all, or because of my loss, perhaps, I have learned. If Christmas is just a feel-good occasion with a romantical (this is a word, I know, my husband used it once and I told him it doesn’t exist, but some old Oxford dictionary agrees with him that it does) side, then no wonder I feel empty. If it’s about feeling warm and cozy or about being excited over a tree with presents underneath, then I feel cheated.

Because I don’t feel warm and cozy. And, compared to the rest of the world, I live in an affluent society; I don’t need more things.

Except for the gifts that cannot be purchased by humans. Peace. Self-less-ness. Humility. Grace. Forgiveness. The ability to forgive others. Over and over.

These lavish gifts were given. They came on a night halfway around the world thousands of years ago. These are the treasures that do more than sparkle and dazzle. These are what my aching heart need.

Christmas again. A season where so many promises are made on TV, telling me that all will be merry if I just bake the right cookie or buy the silver sedan for my loved ones. Of course I don’t buy into those notions. Yet, I would like to feel at least a little Christmas cheer.

And, lo and behold, I do! Because I’ve taken the gift of writing and used it to guide me into a peaceful realization! The conclusion has been the same every year since Daniel’s death: I am broken, frail, and wounded. There are days I’m tired of being me and wish some gracious, loving, carefree woman would take over.

There was a time when I was able to focus less on the Christmas story and the hope it brings, and more on the fleeting exhilaration of decking the halls and having a cup of eggnog. But no more. My son’s demise and death made me appreciate the birth of Jesus Christ more. I know what it is like to struggle, to suffer, to sink into sorrow.

For in the birth comes God with us: Emmanuel. Love Incarnate stooping down to meet us in our nasty conditions, in our pain, our shame, and blahness, so that we can have those valuable intangible presents he bestows. These are the priceless gifts the world with all its fortune can never master. Great blessings of His Heaven!


"How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven
No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin
Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.

Oh holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray
Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today
We hear the Christmas angels, the great glad tidings tell
O come to us, abide with us, our lord Emanuel." ~ From “O Little Town of Bethlehem”




To read more about writing through grief, check out this article: How to Use the Tool of Grief-Writing to Healhttp://www.associatedcontent.com/article/115539/how_to_use_the_tools_of_griefwriting.html?#comments