Dealing with Holiday Blues

Catholic book store window,
reflecting holiday traffic

Every Advent is hectic and, in some sense, filled with care. Finishing a very busy semester, which included sometimes emotional discussions in our classes concerning the events in Ferguson and the nation, plus the work I'm doing on a manuscript with a 5/1/15 deadline, have made me neglect this blog compared to previous years, when I had a little more mental space for Advent blogging.

On the other hand, my wife Beth and I feel like we have been successfully "processing" the deaths of our mothers. Her mom passed away in November 2013 and my mom died in September 2012. The emptiness and grief that filled the past two Christmases have lessened a bit.  

But helping people with sad holiday feelings has always been a concern for me. A couple years ago I looked online for resources on grief and loss during the holidays. Sure enough, there are many. This piece has several ideas for acknowledging your loss and helping yourself during this time. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/22/grief-and-loss-holidays_n_2346372.html#slide=1912741

This piece also concerns ways to deal with grief and loss over the holidays.
http://www.newswise.com/articles/handling-grief-during-the-holidays

This piece was interesting because it concerns congregations that have “Blue Christmas services” http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/12/21/blue-christmas-grief/1785833/  This piece is from two years ago, and I've noticed more church services in my immediate area of this kind. It’s good to work on grief within a religious context, but when you’re down, a very upbeat church service can feel hurtful and exhausting. An intentional effort of congregations to address the needs of the grieving, as these congregations are doing, can be so helpful.

A helpful resource recognizes that grief is a response not only to death but to breakups and divorce.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-kessler/4-solutions-for-holiday-g_b_6360774.html

Another resource helps us not only deal with grief and loss but also how to be a good supporter for something going through a difficult time. http://depression.about.com/od/griefcomfort/a/holidaygrief.htm This year, I plan to make an effort again to call some friends, if not on Christmas Day itself perhaps the day or second day afterward.

What are some things that help you when you're feeling grief, especially over the holidays?

The Sacrament of Snow

I always resented the song “White Christmas,” just a little bit. It’s a lovely song, vastly popular. But I thought it set up the yearly, often disappointed expectation of snow on Christmas day. (The seldom-heard introduction refers to the usually snow-free Beverly Hills which elicits nostalgia for snowy holidays past.) What does it matter if snow falls on Christmas or not?

But I realized there is much more to the expectation of a snowy Christmas! The Christmas 2012 issue of BBC Music magazine has an interesting article, “A Christmas Carol” (pp. 27-34) by David Owen Norris. The author writes that, in pre-Victorian England, harvest season was poised to be a more beloved time of year than Christmas; harvest time rather than Christmas had an appealing narrative of well-being, plenty, and human relationships, while Christmas was just a cold winter holiday that elicited painful longing. However, Norris states that Christmas carols began to make a comeback during the early Victorian period, eclipsing harvest-related hymns. Consequently, Christmas grew in popularity during the 1800s, partly on the basis of this musical appeal.

The real innovation, though, came from Rev. John Mason Neale (1818-1866). He and a colleague produced hymn books for churches. A 16th century Finnish song concerning spring and flowers inspired Neale to write new lyrics, which became “Good King Wenceslas.” What was so innovative about Neale’s song, is that it is the first time a Christmas song links the holiday with snow (p. 31)!  You would think someone would have associated snow and Christmas, but according to Norris, other songwriters (even Scandinavians) had made reference to Christmas cold weather (“The First Noel” is an example) but not to Christmas snow.

Neale's association of snow and Christmas was brilliant and influential. From the publication of “Good King Wenceslas” in 1853, other poets and songwriters found inspiration in the image of Christmas snow, notably Christina Rossetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter,” but also many others (pp. 31, 33).

The religion-science debates of the era provided a different kind of inspiration for the theme of Christmas snow. The Darwinian debates that threatened to erode religious belief necessitated new metaphors for spiritual truth. Snow---peaceful, beautifying, and descended from above---became a perfect metaphor; as Norris writes (p. 34), “If science was concerned with facts, religion with miracles, then the Victorians found a snowy bridge between them.”

Furthermore, that affirmation of miracles was better expressed through song than prose. Norris continues: “Only song could convey these new meanings of Christmas snow... The familiar yet fundamentally irrational human act of singing together was the perfect medium. (Irrationality is important to us in matters of the spirit: look at the idea of carols by candlelight, which could only become truly symbolic once electricity had made the candles pointless.)....

“The very mirage of a white Christmas... became a new way of thinking about miracles, allowing snow to become the outward sign of an inward grace---a secular sacrament. Snow imagined, snow longed for, makes space for a Christmas miracle” (p. 34).

Christmases Long, Long Ago

On my bookshelves, I’ve this toy that’s over fifty years old. Two other examples on Ebay (the toy inside the original box) had asking prices of $400 and $950. Those look to be in better shape than this one. I doubt that mine runs, but I’ve not tried it.

This was a toy Dad purchased for me for Christmas when I was four or five years old, that is, the early 1960s when The Flintstones were first on television. I loved the show. I even remember the end credits of the first season (1960-1961), where the camera panned out to show other houses in the Bedrock neighborhood, as Fred banged on his own door to be let in.

For some reason, however, I hated this toy. Something about the dino-crane frightened me. I must’ve felt okay about the box, which has my crayon marks on it. Dad’s feelings were hurt; though not in a mean way, my parents tended to attach love with gifts and appreciation of gifts, and they also tended to hang onto hurts and slights for a very long time. The toy was something Dad mentioned, maybe once every five or ten years or so. “Paul didn’t like that toy,” he’d say. But it had been stored in the attic with many other belongings of theirs, seemingly beyond the ken of man.

When Mom’s house was eventually cleaned out, though, the toy reappeared amid all the things that had been in the attic. A “D” battery, now very corroded, was still in the dino-crane. I’ve kept the toy and box on display in my own home, not as a reminder of a childhood misunderstanding but of my (now deceased) parents' generosity and our Christmases together.

Twelve Thirteen Fourteen

Today is 12-13-14, on the Gregorian calendar (although elsewhere in the world the date would be rendered 13-12-14).

These kinds of sequences happen occasionally. I worked at my hometown library during college, and one day, as I typed something at the counter, I realized the day was 5-6-78. Woo hoo! The last such sequence was 11-12-13, but The Today Show reported just now that this won't happen again until 1-2-34.

Why do such dates give us satisfaction? They aren't serendipitous or providential, like the way I hear unexpectedly from a good friend when I'm struggling with something. But they're still a pleasing example of found order. No one says, "Oh, hey, two plus two is four." That's no surprise. But you can feel a small sense of peace when you realize, "How fun, it's twelve, thirteen, fourteen."

Cutting Down the Salt

I had a good medical checkup the other day, except for my blood pressure which is high again. I've not been careful lately about my salt intake. So I stopped by the local grocery store and bought some fruit and low-sodium snacks.

I've a longtime love of salty snacks, however. When I was just a few years old, I wanted pretzels, but I said it "pet wows," and my grandmother who was babysitting me didn't know what I wanted, and I became more and more upset. A caregiver's nightmare!

Grandma would've been proud that I came interested in Bible study. I looked up "salt" on the online Jewish Encyclopedia. (All of the following references are from that site). Salt was abundant in the land, with the proximity to the Dead Sea (Gen. 14:3, Josh. 3:16; I've a stone from the Sea in my office), and the salt pits of the area (Zeph. 2:9, I Macc. 2:35). Newborns were rubbed with salt (Ezek. 16:4). Salt was necessary at the sacrifices (Lev. 21:22, Ezra 6:9, 7:22), and covenant ceremonies (Num. 18:19, 2 Chron. 13:5). Salt was also necessary to remove blood from meat, to fulfill the kosher requirement.

The article's author goes on to write: "Salt is considered as the most necessary condiment, and therefore the Rabbis likened the Torah to it; for as the world could not do without salt, neither could it do without the Torah (Soferim xv. 8). A meal without salt is considered no meal (Ber. 44a). Still, salt is one of the three things which must not be used in excess (ib. 55a)." So true!

Unfortunately, there is a holiday bag of chocolate covered pretzels that calls out, maybe as a treat after a low-sodium meal. Nothing in excess!

(Re)Turning to the Center

from patheos.com

I forget when Advent became a particularly meaningful time to me. With the purple vestments symbolizing solemnity, Advent calls us to repentance at the beginning of the church's liturgical year. But at the same time, the candles and the joy of the season brighten the late autumn, during the frantic (though still enjoyable) lead-up to Christmas.

In my book, You Gave Me a Wide Place: Holy Places of Our Lives (Nashville: Upper Room Books, 2006), I wrote: “The word “repentance” (in Hebrew teshuvah) means to turn around or to return. Repentance is a synonym for regret and restitution. But [repentance can also have] a more positive meaning: of aligning one’s priorities in order to remain true to one’s values. Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson writes that, “The beginning place, as with any return, is of having a place from which we start, a home base, a point of origin, a beginning.” But Rabbi Artson also notes that turning/returning includes “finding our essence…our core.” He asks, “What is your core? What is your center? What is that part of yourself that you cannot abandon without walking away from who you truly are? Is your life balanced, centered? This kind of turning is not a turning to get back to some earlier time; it is a turning to remain true.” (1)

These quotations from Rabbi Artson has always inspired me. How might we think of Advent repentance in the way that Rabbi Artson writes: not just sorrow for sin but a rediscovery of our true nature? One way might be to reassess the “truth” of who we are and where we are in our lives. Are we involved in activities that give us a sense of satisfaction and service? Are we engaged in unhelpful activities (gossip, maneuvering for position, etc.) that bespeak a core of unhappiness and selfishness? Do the words we speak sound like the person we want to do--or like some angry, dispirited person?

Rabbi Artson’s questions inform a meaningful Advent time of reflection: “What is your core? What is your center? What is that part of yourself that you cannot abandon without walking away from who you truly are? Is your life balanced, centered?”


1. Bradley Shavit Artson, “Turning,” in Tikkun, Sept.-Oct. 2002, pp. 66-67 (quotation from p. 66).

(Thoughts adapted from a previous post.)

Feast Day of St. Nicholas

Today is the feast day of St. Nicholas. I’ve been thinking of him, because my wife Beth recently traveled to Belgrade and purchased for me a beautiful Orthodox icon of Nicholas, which now hangs in our home. (Actually she was going to purchase it but her host there paid for it for her.)

I started to do a little research on Nicholas but discovered a site that gives comprehensive information about the beloved saint, specially associated with the protection of children. http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/who-is-st-nicholas/ He’s the patron saint of many different persons and occupations, including pawn brokers, whose symbol evokes Nicholas.  http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/people/

This same site also explains why he’s a good saint and reminder for Advent. Although Advent is a time of longing and reflection rather than fulfillment, Nicholas bids us to show God’s love in tangible ways and to stay happy. “Celebrating St. Nicholas on his day in Advent brings a bit of fun and festivity into homes, churches, and schools. His small treats and surprises help keep the spirit of good St. Nicholas, especially when stories of his goodness and kind deeds are told and ways to express his care for those in need are sought. Saint Nicholas helps us remember Christmas is a feast of love, hope, kindness and generosity” (http://www.stnicholascenter.org/pages/advent-saint/)