Simply on the psychological and emotional side, the long darkness gets a large proportion of people kind of down and tired, and a significant proportion of people suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder linked to light deprivation. Add cold, grey skies, fatigue, and all the last minute things to do and pressures to deal with, and many people find this time of year tough to cope with.
Add in the emphasis on family and celebration between Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year which can be hard for lots of people because their circumstances don’t match the forced cheeriness of the advertising and seasonal images, and quite a few souls struggle this time of year. In any year, a certain number of families have suffered significant losses and hardships. Families who have lost members in the early winter find the Christmas season emotionally draining, but anyone who has lost family members or friends in the whole year feels an extra stab of grief in the midst of happiness as we miss someone during the first Christmas after the person’s death. Likewise it is hard for those whose lives have been disrupted by a long-distance move, change in circumstance, family dissolution, or economic hardship. The feelings just don’t match expectations of the season.
I remind you to treat yourself carefully if you find yourself overwhelmed by the season, and to be mindful of others around you who may be experiencing sadness or depression or whatever, and to offer a kindly hand and companionship instead of trying to “make them feel better.” Winters happen. Winters of the soul happen. Sometimes they take a while to pass, but it doesn’t help to tell anyone they need to “get over it.” Keeping someone company in their long night is a powerful help.
A great many churches, especially in recent years, have special worship services, usually on the fourth Sunday of Advent (close to the solstice) to address spiritually the darkness felt by many as sort of a counterpoint— a very necessary counterpoint— to the excessively “jolly” observance of the secular, shopping “Christmas” season.
Blue Christmas services or Longest Night services take seriously not the just the psychological effects of the darkness but also the spiritual sorrow and grief felt by many. Most such worship services dwell gently in that emotional eventide as well, allowing us to settle into it and work through it as the natural progressing of life and seasons and sadness. So many times society in general is uncomfortable with those wintery dark feelings and experiences and tries to dismiss them or chase them away with all the lights and noise. But just like having a floodlight blast you in the eyes in a dark room hurts your eyes, all the seasonal cheer hurts someone’s soul, giving them the same sort of squinting reaction. Many such worship services use dim lights, quiet, and a chance for our souls as well as our eyes to get used to the darkness. And, when we get used to darkness, we see and experience much more in the shadows: more grace, more calmness. There is more helpful stuff there when there is less contrast from megawatts of decorations. Darkness is not always bad. A long night can provide spiritual relief and reflection.
Oddly, the rising familiarity with Longest Night or Blue worship service provides a much deeper context for the Biblical Christmas story and the spiritual light dawning in human darkness. We have become more aware of how many of us dwell in lands of deep darkness, into which the Light has shined, and the stunning hope and health which God offers us in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ makes much more sense, and becomes the best sort of Good News. If there is such a worship service you can attend, I encourage you to go, and perhaps accompany someone who would value the experience.
“The people who have dwelled in darkness, on them has light shined.” On us has light shined.
In Christ,
David
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