The Longest Night

I’m writing this on the first day of winter, December 21, which makes tonight the longest night of the year. We’ll be having a Longest Night service tonight, not so much to commemorate the Winter Solstice as to acknowledge the sense of loss and loneliness that some of us feel at this, “the most wonderful time of the year.” We’ll be missing our youngest son, who isn’t able to be with us this year, and if the weather does what they say it might, our middle son and his wife may not make it, either. Of course not seeing a family member is a lot less serious than losing a family member, and everyone who has been through that can testify that holidays can be difficult, especially the first Christmas after the loss.

At the Crawford County Hospice Tree of Lights ceremony on December 1, the speaker shared a story about how her grandmother’s noodles were the highlight of Christmas dinner for all the years she was growing up. Then Grandma died, and when Christmas came along that year, one of the sisters offered to make the noodles. The speaker said that as they all sat down to Christmas dinner, she took one look at the bowl of noodles and began to cry. It’s often the small things that are the most poignant.

As the Church of Jesus Christ we ought to be experts at dealing with loss. We have several ways of supporting people when they lose a loved one from cards to memorial gifts to the funeral dinner. But we don’t often acknowledge the losses that are harder to pin down. Having gone through two periods of unemployment in my life, I know something of the sinking feeling that brings; it’s almost a loss of self, as though my job helps tell me who I am. The changes our communities have seen over the past few years are a kind of death, and while we keep hoping they’ll come back, we know it won’t be the same.

Well, all this is kind of a downer at Christmas, but if we are going to celebrate with any kind of integrity we have to acknowledge that our celebrations are imperfect because we live in a fallen world. We are surrounded by loss, even as we live in what Titus calls the blessed hope, a text I hope everyone will read on Christmas Eve.

Scholars suggest that the accepted date for Christmas, December 25, came about by attraction to a Roman festival, the Feast of the Unconquered Sun. As the shortest day of the year came and went, the days grew longer and people celebrated the changing of the year. Winter is on its way out; Spring will come, even though it’s months away. The Church in its wisdom seized on that date to celebrate the Sun of Righteousness, who rises with healing in his wings (Malachi 4:2, an image used by Charles Wesley in “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing”). The wisdom of that decision is seen year after year, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, as we celebrate the birth of Christ at just the time when the earth is at its lowest point. A candle is that much brighter when it is lit in the darkness.

May the candles of Christmas light the way for you this year, and may your celebration be filled with joy.