Surviving Christmas

Surviving Christmas

I have a love-hate relationship with Christmas. On the one hand, I love the beauty of Christmas; the carols, twinkling lights, snow (hopefully), and trees with glistening crystal ornaments. I enjoy traditions like watching one my favorite movies, It’s a Wonderful Life. I love the kindness and generosity of Christmas and I love seeing the sheer joy of children’s glee. Once, in mid-December, I was in a restaurant at the top of a downtown building and I happened to sit next to a couple who got engaged right in front of me. The young man knelt down and proposed to his girlfriend just like in a Hollywood movie. It oozed with romance.

On the other hand, I have painful memories of the holiday season. I spent the first Christmas after my mom died in Florida with no snow, which was bad enough. But we were too tired to cook so we had a depressing Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant. Another unforgettable memory was the Christmas my marriage ended. I also have alcohol addiction in my family and anyone with that history knows that Christmas is never pretty. I could have the Christmas blues from a whole sleigh full of painful memories. So I come by my holiday grievances honestly. And I am not alone. Counselors and physicians will tell you that depression, anxiety and health issues escalate at Christmas and their offices fill up in January.

Somewhere along the way I decided to try to heal Christmas as part of my spiritual journey. I did not want to dread the season any more. My blues usually started around Halloween when I became angry and anxious. As I prayed about this quandary I experienced a curious invitation from God to actually participate in the nativity scene by taking on one of the characters and living into their story during the season. I didn’t know how to do it at first but I accepted it as a spiritual challenge and I noticed it slowly shifted my focus from pain to more awareness of my nativity character.

One year I was an angel and I became much more aware of the angel message “Fear not.” The message rang true since that was the year my major source of income dried up. I was Joseph during a season in which I needed to learn from his complicated journey of trusting God’s message to him while he had a fiancé who was pregnant—and not with his child.  The courageous way he faced that shame was inspiring. I could feel his trust in God, his enduring love for Mary. I needed his kind of courage and faithfulness that year to face a betrayal and yet believe that God was leading me forward. This idea of an assignment each year has been so fruitful that now I anticipate it at Halloween instead of getting so stressed.

That brings me to this year. My assignment was to be the innkeeper. At first I wondered about this choice since the innkeeper probably turned the Holy family away initially due to a full house. Then I realized that the inner keeper may have seen how important it was to show compassion to this family and provide a humble but safe place for them. He gave them all he had left. As I lived into the story of the innkeeper I became his wife, a co-innkeeper there in the stable that holy night. I heard God asking me to be an innkeeper and mid-wife for people who are experiencing spiritual rebirths into a deeper inner life. But how, exactly, would I do that?

The answer came in a beautiful sensuous experience. I awoke early one morning and, while I was still emerging from sleep, felt a Presence caressing my shoulders and back. I felt the Presence move to a place hear my heart and just rest there. I melted into this embrace and kept still. The soothing Presence stayed as I awakened more fully. Then I felt a little nudge to move to my living room sofa with my comfy quilt, and when I did I noticed my Peruvian nativity scene on the table. I lit a candle near the scene and, in the predawn darkness, the candle light bathed the faces of Mary and Joseph in a gentle glow. They were both looking at the infant Jesus, in the manger. I could almost see them smile and hear them humming.

I sensed a deeper glow in the nativity scene, coming from the Presence, a holy Presence. I was pondering the meaning of all of this when I heard a message to me: “Don’t try to figure this out. Just experience my Presence, my Beloved. Just watch and feel it move beyond the scene into you as well.” So I stayed still, and was taken into the holy scene, engaging with the wonder of it all.  I felt the holy Presence was the spirit of Jesus inviting me again to be an innkeeper mid-wife for his birthing process and also for other people at crucial intersections.

Then this message followed: “I just want you to be a presence, my presence, in the world. Attend to your intimacy with me and all else will follow. You will be a mid-wife for people. You will be a non-anxious presence bringing healing, joy and beauty to the world. Trust me completely. Just be a presence.”

This predawn appearance of a holy Presence soothed me in such a deep way that I wonder if maybe, just maybe, my love-hate relationship with Christmas is now healed. My heart desires this healing. Time will tell. But now, when I look at the nativity scene I go back to my memory of that Presence in the glow on the faces of the holy family. I recall that I helped with this birth and that I am called to attend to more spiritual births as I continue in an intimate relationship with God. I am a tiny presence of the holy, a small spark of light, a mid-wife innkeeper.

© Janet O. Hagberg, 2009. All rights reserved

Reflections on this essay

What joyful or meaningful memories do you associate with Christmas?

What pain resurfaces for you at the holidays?

How have you healed your experience of Christmas?

Which of the nativity characters do you most identify with this year? Why?

What is being born in you this Christmas?

How do you experience the holy Presence in your life?