The Grinch. Scrooge.
Two names synonymous with failing to be sufficiently gleeful during the Christmas season. Or, at the very least, names given to those who do not have the so-called “Christmas spirit.” The Christmas spirit is, after all, the mood of being jolly, making merriment, being joyful, “singing loud for all to hear,” as was the case in the movie Elf.
If, then, one defies the expectations of the mood of the season, then you’re liable to be lumped in with a penny-pinching harsh taskmaster like Scrooge, or a thieving goblin-adjacent lonely man like Grinch, or a book-demanding, publishing house-owning, Christmas Eve-working boss like in Elf. But what if you don’t feel jolly this Christmas season? What if the mood for you isn’t merriment?
I have had a roller coaster relationship with Christmas myself. As a kid, of course I enjoyed it like all kids do. As I became a teenager and young adult, I did not like it all that much, often volunteering to work on Christmas day so that others might enjoy the festivities in a way I would not. Then in recent years I have become more in a Christmas mood, listening to “Christmas music” well before the culturally acceptable window.
But this year? This year I don’t feel jolly and the season does not feel all that bright.
This year? No Christmas music for me. The movies we will often play during the season as a family? Not so much. All the decorations at the house? Just a solitary tree my kids put up and decorated.
To be sure, I understand that Christmas announces a joyous event. The incarnation of preexistent God is an unbelievably boisterous, cataclysmic, earth-shattering event. It deserves a mood of joy. After all, it announces God and sinner reconciled. It tells of incarnate deity who was “pleased as man with men to dwell.” Christ came to dispel darkness, to rescue wayward rebels of which I am chief.
This is incredible news that surpasses all news. And I am joyful, but is there room in our view of Christmas for a mood that is outside of the “merry” and the “jolly” and all of that? What if I do not feel like singing? What if, for all I care, this season ends quickly? Am I Scrouge? Am I Grinch?
Maybe. Or maybe there really is room in a theologically robust view of Christmas for those of us who feel that this midwinter is bleak. After all, Christ did not, as NT Wright said, come into the world to tell us that everything is alright. In fact, the opposite is true: Christ came into the world to confront it with its brokenness, helplessness, and need. If the world were fine, the incarnation would be unnecessary. So the incarnation does not tell us that we must force joy to mask the painful realities of life in this age. It does the opposite: it is honest that things are not right in this world.
Let us think about the first Christmas. Joy was declared, this earth-shattering thing had taken place, but it was also surrounded by blood as Herod slaughtered the innocents. It was surrounded by exile as Jesus’ family fled to spare Him of that mortal danger. It was about the Godman who was born to an unwed handmaiden surrounded by donkeys and cows, visited by shepherds, wrapped in whatever clothe was on hand. The Bible is not shy about any of that.
Nor did the man Jesus, when He preached His first sermon say that He had come to proclaim to the captives that they really were not captives, or the blind that blindness is not so bad. Rather, He proclaimed freedom would come, but not yet. He was not shy that there were things in which humans are bound or things that make us sorrow or things that make us long for a better world.
Isn’t the trick of Christmas, then, that we live between Advents? Christ came, Christ will come again. Until then, we look forward to when all things are made new, but they have not been made new yet. We still ache, we still weep, we still experience loss and pain. The Bible does not cover over those things.
There is, then, a tension that must be had at Christmas. A straight jolly Christmas does not actually seem to be the proper mood. That does not mean dourness if required. But there is a reason the church has historically (outside of most ‘low’ church denominations) recognized the “Feast of Innocents” only a few days after Christmas. Because that’s honest. Joy must not be an excuse to act as if this place were not profoundly broken. Nor ought brokenness act as if there is not something to be joyous about.
I appreciate the way Tish Harrison Warren put it in a recent New York Times column when she wrote, “American culture insists that we run at breathless pace from sugar-laced celebration to celebration — three months of Christmas to the Super Bowl, Mardi Gras, Valentine’s Day, Cinco de Mayo, Fourth of July, and on and on. We suffer from a collective consumerist mania that demands we remain optimistic, shiny, happy and having fun, fun, fun…
I do not want to be the Grinch tsk-tsking anyone for decorating the tree early or firing up “Jingle Bell Rock” before the 25th. I’m all for happiness, joy, eggnog, corny sweaters and parties, but to rush into Christmas without first taking time to collectively acknowledge the sorrow in the world and in our own lives seems like an inebriated and overstuffed practice of denial.”
Here is what I cannot deny this Christmas season: I thought when Christmas 2025 arrived I would be watching my children open presents while I held my baby boy Ambrose. Instead, I held his lifeless frame on August 1. Instead of feeding my son, I’ll be recalling the fleeting moments I had with him. Instead of hearing him make the various noises newborns tend to make, I will be hearing the faint echoes of my restrained sobs bouncing off the bedroom walls.
I know some people are fairly good at phoning in a cheery mood for the sake of others. I am not one of those people. I point people to the hope of Christ for a living, and that hope is what keeps me on two feet. But it would be pastoral malpractice if I didn’t also tell my people that this world is incredibly broken and that the Bible does not demand a forced mood of happiness when one feels acutely how sorrowful it is to lose someone you love.
So this year I will remember the earth-moving incarnation, and hope in a second advent. I will be joyful, but not merry. I may be violating the prosperity gospel, consumeristic, culturally happy clappy mood of the season, but I will not be violating the honesty that the real Christmas declares. The man of sorrows wept as both a baby and a man, He hurts with us still, for we are united with Him. I have a High Priest, then, who knows what it is like to feel as I do. In Him I rest, even through my sadness. That seems to be closer to what Christmas is about.
The Bearded Ecclesiologian 