The Holidays: Encountering Darkness and Finding Light

The Winter holidays are difficult for many people. There are high expectations, mixed with frustrations and even grief. But the nature of the holidays draws us to the interplay of darkness and light that is the foundation of these celebrations.

The following is a text version of this posting.

In many ways I think it’s true:  the winter holidays are made for children.  Even with songs touting that it’s the most wonderful time of the year, there’s a lot of stress and strain on adults in preparing for the winter holidays.  It doesn’t matter whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, or Kwanza. Our feelings surrounding the holiday season are often complex. 

The commercialization of the winter holidays has raised our expectations for them to be over-the-top-fantastic year after year.  But that’s not reality.  Many of us are aware of loved ones who have passed, so we experience a degree of grief during the holidays.  There are strained relationships among families and loved ones that can lead to added tension during the holidays.  In it all, we’re sometimes confused about what we’re really celebrating and what it means because of the many emotions we experience.

I find it helpful to step back and look at the bigger picture.  Yes, for me, the best Christmases were when I was young at my parent’s home.  Today, most of the people who once gathered around my family are gone.  With my partner’s family in another country, Christmas is often the two of us.  It’s very pleasant and I enjoy the time.  But it’s not what it once was for me.

Yet, the simplicity has allowed me to focus on the importance of Christmas.  For me, it’s not about commercialization.  It’s also not about Jesus having a birthday.  Instead, it’s the larger saga of the Christmas story:  that people living in oppression, who were dirt poor and largely illiterate and barely able to keep it together, were illuminated on a cold night by the light of a star.  It’s a story of hope in life’s difficult times.  It’s the light overcoming the darkness of night.  We all know the darkness of night in our lives, the struggles to keep it together during life’s difficult times.  They come to us in different ways.  Each of our stories is unique.  But there’s something universal in the story.

The essence of the same story is found in Hanukkah: in a desperate, dangerous time, the light of the menorah kept burning even though it should have burned out.  Hanukkah is about hope in difficult times.

In Kwanza, we find the same mythology:  a people who have known very difficult times, who lost it all and were valued as property, find light and hope in key values that have sustained them.

These lessons are rooted in the ancient human psyche and trace the roots far beyond our contemporary traditions.  The significance of the metaphor of light’s triumph over darkness is the heart of ancient celebrations of the winter solstice.  This metaphor is the foundation of the oldest religion still practiced today, Zoroastrianism.

If we pay attention to the winter holidays, we come to realize that they aren’t for the faint of heart.  They aren’t about covering everything with festive trimmings.  But they are the most wonderful time of the year because they invite us to hope, to dream, and to believe that more is possible.

During these holidays, be careful not to lose yourself in the tinsel and trimmings.  Instead, recognize that we each carry the wounds and scars of life’s difficulties.  These holidays are for us because we know that in rough times, there is hope:  hope for today and for every tomorrow.  Light those candles and put a star on a tree.  They are holy icons calling us to remember that life continues to have a unique brightness and glimmer even on the darkest days.