Christmas – When You Feel Like Scrooge

The stores filled with Christmas items especially early this season, “Santa Baby” playing endlessly on the local radio station since late October. Christmas all around me and I am already getting tired of it. Yes, I sound like the famous character of Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol. “Bah! Humbug!”

There is a festiveness and cheer that fills the air and a general good will. We spend the season surrounded by family, food and traditions. Smiling children, joy and magic. Yet despite the smiles many people are hiding a good deal of pain. Loss of a loved one, physical pain, emotional pain – whatever our heartache – it is exacerbated by the season. It doesn’t matter what the struggle is, it can make this time of year especially painful. It is a time of year when we spend a lot of time judging our interiors but other exteriors. Falling into the trap of thinking their life must be perfect, when reality is really quite different. Sometimes deep in our hearts we wonder, Why bother with Christmas at all?

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, offered this reflection in his Christmas address in 2005: “God became man for our sake: this is the message which, every year, from the silent grotto of Bethlehem spreads even to the most out-of-the-way corners of the earth. Christmas is a feast of light and peace, it is a day of inner wonder and joy that expands throughout the universe, because “God became man”. From the humble grotto of Bethlehem, the eternal Son of God, who became a tiny Child, addresses each one of us: he calls us, invites us to be reborn in him so that, with him, we may live eternally in communion with the Most Holy Trinity.” But a few moments later Pope Emeritus continues describing to us the last days of his beloved friend Pope John Paul II saying, “In the end, however, his lot was a journey of suffering and silence. Unforgettable for us are the images of Palm Sunday when, holding an olive branch and marked by pain, he came to the window and imparted the Lord’s Blessing as he himself was about to walk towards the Cross.”

It struck me as I read this reflection how true this is. The Christian is never far from the cross. The tiny baby we celebrate with such joy now, is the God-Man who suffered and died for us on the cross. Perhaps when Christmas and the birth of the child-Christ bring too much pain, we are called to reflect instead on the crucified-Christ. This tiny baby we celebrate with glitter and festivity was born in cold and poverty. His story is the story of suffering. His story brings us hope.