{"id":8332,"date":"2018-12-14T10:10:48","date_gmt":"2018-12-14T16:10:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/?p=8332"},"modified":"2026-02-26T13:41:32","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T19:41:32","slug":"most-wonderful-time-of-the-year","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/2018\/12\/14\/most-wonderful-time-of-the-year\/","title":{"rendered":"Most wonderful time of the year"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt\u2019s the most wonderful time of the year!\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"woman-lights-snow-christmas\"
Image courtesy pixabay.com<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Except, for you, this holiday season is anything <\/span>but<\/span><\/i>. Maybe you are moving through the annual traditions for the first time without a loved one because of death or divorce. Maybe a job loss or economic hardship means buying gifts or booking travel is financially out of reach. Maybe family dysfunction brought on by addiction or mental illness has strained relationships to the breaking point. Maybe you are spending your days enduring chemotherapy or healing from major surgery instead of trimming the tree and wrapping gifts. Maybe your experience of infant loss or miscarriage means that the mail filled with cheery photos of <\/span>others<\/span><\/i>\u2019 kids sitting on Santa\u2019s lap or posed beside the fireplace touches your own place of loss. Maybe this year, you and yours are among so many who have been touched by natural disasters or gun violence or deportation or mass incarceration. <\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe these or any number of other things has knocked the wind of you and left you wondering how you will make it through the coming days. Instead of joining in the angels\u2019 exultant song of jubilation, your heart resonates more with \u201cO Come O Come Emmanuel\u2019s\u201d plaintive words of mourning in lonely exile.<\/span><\/p>\n

If this is you, I\u2019m sorry. Whatever your struggle is, it\u2019s legitimate, and whatever hard feelings it elicits \u2013 anxiety, grief, anger or sadness \u2013 are real. You\u2019re not Ebenezer Scrooge because you\u2019re unable to marshal the inner resources for holiday cheer this year, you\u2019re just human. Even when you try to focus on the positive and what you\u2019re thankful for instead of what you\u2019ve lost, there is no short-circuiting grief. More and more churches acknowledge this reality and now offer \u201c<\/span>Longest Night<\/span><\/a>\u201d or \u201c<\/span>Blue Christmas<\/span><\/a>\u201d liturgies as spaces of prayer and pastoral care for those who struggle. \u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As I\u2019ve been accompanying some loved ones who find this season challenging, it seems the general message offered in mainstream culture, \u201cBe joyful and happy! Holidays are filled with magic and delight!\u201d only serves to highlight the chasm between what they wished they were feeling with what they actually are. It is salt in the wound not only to grieve a loss but then to be fed a steady diet of idealized images of the picture-perfect holiday. The crooning singers advising \u201clet your heart be light\u201d because \u201cfrom now on your troubles will be out of sight\u201d don\u2019t help matters much. <\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re living in the uncomfortable gap between the ideal and the real, take heart: this perfect holiday tableau of cheerful families in matching pajamas, gathered around a huge turkey or the Christmas tree, is the invention of marketers trying to sell us stuff. That\u2019s how advertising works: it offers an attractive ideal that we invariably fall short of and then pitches a product or service with the promise that we, too, can achieve that ideal. The commercialization is the cultural water we swim in, so it is hard to separate that American capitalist spin from the Gospel truth of the Feast of the Incarnation. But it\u2019s worth dissecting the cultural overlay from the scriptural narrative \u2013 especially if you\u2019re not feeling \u201cmerry and bright\u201d this holiday season. <\/span><\/p>\n

If it is any consolation, if we excavate the original Christmas story out from under the accumulated layers of advertising content, it\u2019s plain to see that the first Christmas would not make a feel-good Hallmark movie. When the culture offers images of jolly Santa and his flying reindeer, or affluent families with toothpaste-commercial smiles opening piles of perfectly wrapped gifts, the Gospels offer the story of Emmanuel, God with us, poor and weak. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"mary-baby-jesus-joseph-donkey\"
Image courtesy jesus-passion.com<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Joseph, Mary and Jesus were vulnerable and faced great uncertainty as Jews living under brutal imperial occupiers. It\u2019s hard to imagine that there wasn\u2019t tension in the family when Mary announced she was pregnant outside of marriage, especially when Mosaic law prescribed she should be stoned. Mary and Joseph weren\u2019t wealthy (as evidenced by their offering in the temple) and lived under heavy taxation (which is why they traveled to Bethlehem for the census). There was no room at the inn for them, and then they fled to Egypt as refugees because of Herod\u2019s ruthless decree to slaughter children. The Lukan author reminds us that when the Christ child was presented in the temple, Mary was told a sword would pierce her heart. Myrrh, one of the gifts of the Magi, was used for embalming and prefigures death. <\/span><\/p>\n

There is darkness and tumult to this story; however, in churches or culture in general, it doesn\u2019t get much air time in popular depictions of Christmas. Though I understand adapting the narrative to make it kid-friendly, it is a pastoral disservice to make the Christmas story too sanitized and saccharine. Yes, there is rejoicing, new life and good news. And it comes in the midst of the messiness, fear, uncertainty, loss and oppression that maybe resonates with you if you\u2019re not in a head space to sing \u201cbe of good cheer!\u201d Christmas is about the birth of God coming in the middle of a lot of turmoil and pain. <\/span><\/p>\n

The cleaned-up scene in church sanctuary creches or in pastel tones on Christmas cards distances us from the more complicated truth. God was born as a baby into a messy, broken, chaotic world. From a scriptural standpoint, the Christmas spirit has nothing to do with our American cultural clich\u00e9s and everything to do with the miracle of a light shining in the darkness that is not overcome. Jesuit Alfred Delp, who was killed for his opposition to the Nazis, wrote that \u201cthe early Church viewed Christmas as the feast of the great howl of those whose lives have been upended, shaken \u2013 the birth is not a romantic wonder, it\u2019s a chancy rescue mission from the borders.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

So if it doesn\u2019t feel like the most wonderful time of the year \u2013 take heart that you are not alone. The birth of the Christ child is not supposed to be \u201ca romantic wonder.\u201d Let\u2019s turn off the TV with its constant flash of idealized images of holiday cheer and close the glossy pages of catalogues peddling a pictures of prosperity and glee. And let\u2019s turn back to the original story of this \u201cchancy rescue mission\u201d of how God chose to enter the world as a vulnerable newborn in the midst of great uncertainty and turmoil.<\/span><\/p>\n

About the Rabble Rouser:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Rhonda-Miska-red-shirt\"<\/a>
Photo courtesy of Wendy Wareham Photography<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Rhonda Miska<\/strong> is an apostolic novice with the <\/span><\/i>Sinsinawa Dominican Sisters<\/span><\/i><\/a>. After having served as a Jesuit Volunteer, in parish ministry and at retreat\/spirituality centers, she is currently in ministry at <\/span><\/i>Dominican University<\/span><\/i><\/a> in River Forest, Illinois. Sister Rhonda knows Sister Julia through <\/span><\/i>Giving Voice<\/span><\/i><\/a>, a group of Catholic sisters under the age of 50.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s the most wonderful time of the year!\u201d \u00a0 Except, for you, this holiday season is anything but. Maybe you are moving through the annual traditions for the first time without a loved one because of death or divorce. Maybe a job loss or economic hardship means buying gifts or booking travel is financially out...","protected":false},"author":42801868,"featured_media":8333,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2178641],"tags":[698755378,14196316,2814242,110717,17200213,857350,29185,549813,5840,7383,241748,82348],"series":[698756626],"class_list":["post-8332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-prayer-and-spirituality","tag-advent","tag-christmas","tag-commercialization-of-christmas","tag-emmanuel","tag-flight-into-egypt","tag-god-with-us","tag-holiday-cheer","tag-holy-family","tag-joy","tag-pain","tag-struggle","tag-suffering","series-messy-jesus-business"],"acf":[],"episode_featured_image":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/christmas-2971961_640.jpg","episode_player_image":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/wp-content\/plugins\/seriously-simple-podcasting\/assets\/images\/no-album-art.png","download_link":"","player_link":"","audio_player":false,"episode_data":{"playerMode":"dark","subscribeUrls":{"apple_podcasts":{"key":"apple_podcasts","url":"","label":"Apple Podcasts","class":"apple_podcasts","icon":"apple-podcasts.png"},"stitcher":{"key":"stitcher","url":"","label":"Stitcher","class":"stitcher","icon":"stitcher.png"},"google_podcasts":{"key":"google_podcasts","url":"","label":"Google Podcasts","class":"google_podcasts","icon":"google-podcasts.png"},"spotify":{"key":"spotify","url":"","label":"Spotify","class":"spotify","icon":"spotify.png"}},"rssFeedUrl":"https:\/\/customwordpresssites.com\/mjb\/feed\/podcast\/messy-jesus-business","embedCode":"

Most wonderful time of the year<\/a><\/blockquote>