This year, I found myself wishing we could skip the holiday season all together.
I’ve never had that experience before. I knew some people felt that way around the holidays and I had experienced a taste of the sentiment - the twinge of pain when my grandmother didn’t show up the first Thanksgiving after she died or the feeling that I should be happy but can’t be when listening to Christmas music in the store. I have felt small pieces of the ache and loneliness that makes people want to skip the holidays altogether, but I had never felt the full weight of it until this year. Usually, I look forward to the holidays as a source of encouragement and connection. This year has been different.
Three months ago my children left. Although they were never legally mine, they held that place in my heart and the pain of losing them is the deepest pain I have ever felt. My children are gone and the house seems lonely without them. The isolation forced upon us by the COVID epidemic deepens my sense of loneliness. Familiar events, traditions, and people fade away as I sit at home, isolated from others, willing my heart to find joy in this season again.
This occasional apathy towards the entire holiday season frustrates me. I know that Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter are supposed to be about remembering God’s goodness to me, not about the traditions and the food and the gifts. If the true meaning of these holidays hasn’t changed, why has my desire to celebrate them disappeared? And how do I regain that desire in the midst of a holiday season that has looked nothing like the safe and comfortable memories from my childhood?
Maybe it is because I don’t want to be reminded of everything we have lost this year. Maybe I find it easier to ignore holidays than find new rituals and traditions that won’t seem the same. Or maybe (in a trait I would guess is common among most humans) I simply lack a context for celebrating in the midst of suffering.
I have found that one of the most encouraging passages of Scripture for me to read is the recounting of Jesus’ last hours and the upper room discourse. I have been reading through these passages often during these days, but today I stumbled across a verse that never stood out to me before but suddenly did. In Luke chapter 22, Jesus commands Peter and John, “Go and prepare the Passover for us that we may eat it.” As I was reading that verse, it suddenly struck me: Jesus celebrated the Passover.
In Jesus' day the Passover was arguably the largest and most important Jewish holiday of the year. It was established in remembrance of the salvation God had brought to the nation of Israel when He rescued them from slavery in Egypt, and it foreshadowed the time when God would rescue all of His people from slavery to sin through the sacrifice of His Son. Jesus was that sacrifice. He had come to be broken, and mistreated, and crucified, all for the sake of a world that rejected and mocked Him. And yet, hours before He was going to be arrested and crucified, Jesus chose to celebrate the Passover.
Perhaps even more interesting to me than the fact that Jesus observed the Passover is the way that He chose to do so. Honestly, if I knew I was about to endure a painful and humiliating death I probably wouldn’t want to celebrate a holiday at all, and if I did celebrate it would be in a way that focused on self-care and making myself feel better for a moment. But the Gospels tell us Jesus didn’t celebrate that way. Instead, He ate a meal with twelve men who were destined to forsake Him, one of whom would betray Him to His death. He washed their feet. He taught them the truth and He reiterated His love for them over and over again. And in the final hours before His arrest, Jesus sang and prayed to His Heavenly Father.
If anyone could be justified in wanting to ignore a holiday, I think it would be Jesus on that Passover night. But rather than see the Passover as a frustrating inconvenience or a painful reminder of suffering, Jesus saw it as an opportunity to love His Heavenly Father and reach out to the people around Him.
How could Jesus celebrate in the midst of the greatest injustice in all of history? How could He love the people He knew would betray Him? How did He sing when His heart was heavy?
I wish there was a magic response to that or some catchy phrase that would make my own celebrations this year suddenly seem easy. But the conclusion I see in Scripture isn’t magical or easy, despite being incredibly simple. I believe Jesus was able to observe the Passover with thankfulness that night because He knew the Father’s love for Him and He loved others the same way.
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” - John 15:9-12
Jesus knew He was loved by the Father. Despite the pain and separation He was about to face He knew He was loved and that knowledge enabled Him to follow His Father as He cried out, “Not My will but Yours be done.” (Luke 22:42) Jesus genuinely loved others, and that love motivated Him to lay aside His own sorrows and needs and seek to remember a holiday that foretold His own death through service to others. He observed the Passover while steadfast in His Father’s love. As Paul reminds us, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again; Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.” (Philippians 4:4-5) Not rejoice because you are surrounded by everything you want. Not rejoice because your year has been easy. Not rejoice because you get to see loved ones and eat your favorite foods. Rejoice because the Lord is near. In the midst of the heartache and the confusion and the frustration of this year, the Lord is near.
It’s Thanksgiving Day, and I find myself lying on the couch with a fever. My wonderful husband is making a Thanksgiving dinner for the two of us to share later, and I am praying that he and I will be able to taste it (although my investigations on the internet say the likelihood of regaining my taste in the next hour isn't particularly high). This Thanksgiving looks a lot different than the celebrations I remember growing up, but I can honestly say that I find myself more at peace and more thankful in this moment than I have been in the past weeks or even months leading up to today. I know my Lord is near. And I want to celebrate that fact.
I don’t know what the holiday season will look like for me this year. I don’t know if I will be able to capture the classic feeling of “Christmas cheer” and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some moments that feel lonely or bring me to tears. It’s okay to acknowledge pain, it’s okay (and this year it may be necessary) for traditions to change, and it’s okay to grieve when I have encountered loss. Jesus wept in the garden and He spoke of His death during the Passover meal. Grief in the midst of the holidays isn't wrong. But that grief doesn’t mean I can't celebrate God’s love towards me. In the midst of everything He is near. And knowing the my Savior is near is a far more precious reason to celebrate than any human traditions can provide.
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