Christmas hurts. When I was a
kid, even though my parents didn’t have much money, they always tried so hard
to give us a nice Christmas. Christmas
was always a magical time full of family, food, and festivities, and it was a
time of year that I always looked forward to.
I never understood why so many people associated such a joyful time of
year with stress, anger, and loss.
Now, I dread it. I began to
notice when I left home that in my family, I seemed to be the only one keeping
the magic of Christmas alive. The house
would not be decorated, and no tree would be cut until I came home after exams
somewhere around the 20th of December, and even then this would only
happen after a few fights with my mother, with me doing all the work of
cleaning, digging boxes out of the overcrowded basement, and decorating. Whenever I came home for the holidays, the
first words my dad would speak to me on my first morning back were “why don’t
you make yourself useful and bake something today…” I didn’t really mind this too much at first,
because baking meant eating (which is something I enjoy), but after a while I
began to notice that this was something I always did alone, which I didn’t
enjoy. No one else in my family cared to
undertake either of these tasks, and had I not have been there to do them, I
know they wouldn’t have been done. After
last year, both sides of the family decided to move on from Christmas
get-togethers. The message being sent
was that both families have matured and need to move on from such childish
frivolity. Christmas didn’t matter. As a born-again Christian, I was really hurt
by that. I know that neither family has
a really strong faith background, especially in my generation, but to say that
the birth of Christ, or even the season need not be celebrated by a gathering
and meal-sharing of close relatives who seldom get to see each other really
upset me. Further to this, my mom called
me up a few weeks before Christmas to say that there would be no decorations or
tree at our house this year, and very minimal exchanging of gifts. Celebration was frivolous. Decorating was too much work (even though I
would have been the one to do it).
My immediate reaction was to not go home for Christmas at all. If I was going to be alone and miserable in
my room over the holidays, I could do that just as well in London as in
Markham—and more comfortably, seeing as I don’t have a bed in my parents’
house. I didn’t see the point of making
my own Christmas at their house when they had made it clear that they didn’t
want to celebrate.
But after some spiritual consultation, and a lot of prayer, I
realized that it was important to go home and be with family—God was going to
show me something great if I did. So I went home on December 21st, after my last day of
work, and only planned to stay until the 27th, knowing that if this
proved to be too long, I could always crash at a friend’s place.
The first couple of days were kind of a “honeymoon phase”, where
everything was great, and we were tolerant of each other’s quirks, seeing as we
hadn’t all been together for that length of time since the summer. Things started to go downhill on Christmas
Eve, which is understandable with stress building as final Christmas
preparations were being made—we were cooking everything but the turkey for a
turkey dinner on Christmas day, which was to be transported to my Gramma’s
house an hour away, and the kitchen in my parents’ house is not well-designed,
and about the size of the head of a pin…
Then we went to church for the Christmas Eve service. I’m not a big fan of my parents’ church. It’s an old church in an affluent
neighborhood with an old congregation, being kept alive by old money. I haven’t really experienced God in that
place before, but I was determined to get something out of that service in some
way, so I went with an open heart and mind.
The service itself was nothing special, and there was nothing wrong with
that. What really irked me was during
the sermon, the pastor was talking about “Christmas-and-Easter-Christians”,
saying that there was absolutely nothing wrong with them. Now, I’ll agree that it isn’t very diplomatic
or loving to be condescending and give these types of Christians the idea that
those who go to church more often are better than them, because it simply isn’t
true. There are plenty of people who go
to church every week and don’t follow Jesus, and there are plenty of perfectly
good, well-meaning people who haven’t ever darkened the door of a church. The problem I had with this message, was that
it seemed to give an “everything’s okay” impression. It’s okay if you only come to church twice a
year, which can be interpreted as:
a)
we’re happy as a church
community with the people we have, and aren’t interested in getting to know you
b)
you don’t need to go to
church/be in community to follow Jesus
c)
you should be spiritually
satisfied with what comes out of attending church twice a year
It’s okay.
It’s not okay. These things are just plain
wrong. If anything, I’ve got a problem
with the church that isn’t bold enough to say “Jesus is in this place, we know
we’re doing a good thing here, and we want you to come sit with us around God’s
table as his family—all the time!” If there’s anything I’ve learned about Jesus
in the last year and a bit that I didn’t know before, he was a bold dude, and
he calls us to be bold as we share his truth—the gospel. That’s something I know a lot of churches in
the western world are missing.
So I left a bit disappointed, but looking forward to Christmas
morning. It came and went—nothing
special, about 4 small gifts per person scattered around a 45cm tall cheap,
fiber-optic, plastic tree. The Christmas
spirit wasn’t in our house, but we had to go bring it to the grandparents
somehow. I developed a bad headache in
the car, but figured it was just because I was hungry, and would go away once I
was able to eat. We stopped at the
nursing home where my dad’s parents lived, and I had been guilt tripped (with
my brother) to play some German Christmas carols for them. I got in the door and couldn’t move. My head was killing me, I couldn’t see
straight, I was nauseous, and every fiber of my being was holding me back. I sat down and cried. I had no idea what was going on. I hadn’t had a panic attack in months, why
was I having one now—on Christmas, of all days, when I was supposed to be
bringing joy to people who had otherwise lost the will to live. I was incredibly frustrated, and my family
members seemed totally indifferent to my situation, wondering “what the hell
[was] wrong with [me]” and why I couldn’t just go do what I had to do. I couldn’t do it. I have no idea why. I became the jerk in that situation then, as
a result of my inability to function.
That hurt.
We returned to my Gramma’s apartment. I sat on the couch most of the time until
someone made me “make [myself] useful and make the gravy”, which I did mainly
just to keep the peace, not because I wanted to. I ate about as much as a normal person would
at a regular dinner (I’ve been told I eat about as much as a five-year-old),
while the others stuffed their faces (as one should do at a turkey
dinner). My brother ate (and drank) so
much that he started throwing up, which wasn’t super good for my headache +
nausea + pathological fear of vomit. I
refused to sit in the back seat with him on the way home, but instead sat in
the front and thought over what a horrible day it had been. Then another panic attack hit, and I
cried—like, bawled, with my whole family in the car—for about 45 minutes. No one said anything, or did anything. The thought just kept returning to my mind,
that this was actually the worst Christmas ever.
The panic ebbed and flowed until we arrived home, and I stormed up
to my room and shut the door, eager to cry myself to sleep and forget this day. I started questioning God; why would he bring
me here only to suffer—exactly what I wanted to avoid. Then I remembered something that my mom had
said when she was trying to persuade me to come home for the holiday: don’t
shut out your family; they are the only ones who will love you at your worst
and be there for you, regardless of your situation. “She failed that test today”, I thought. Then I remembered, I’m part of another family,
before any human one, with a father who loves me so deeply that he would send
his son down to earth to live among us, to know pain and suffering much greater
than I have experienced, and to be killed by the same people he came to serve,
so that anyone, regardless of past,
gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status… the list goes on… can be born
again and live with God our Father in heaven forever.
I have a family of brothers and sisters in Christ as well, and God
has placed each of them into my life at exactly the right time. When we fellowship together in community with
one another, I get a sense of belonging that I’ve never felt with any other
group of people—it’s the most amazing, indescribable thing that I hope for
everyone, especially my biological family.
Even if that day isn’t soon, it’s going to happen, because God wants his
people to be reconciled.
God turned my “worst Christmas ever” into the best one yet, just by
reminding me of who he is, who he has put in my life, and how his love and grace
are limitless. He has adopted me into
the best family that anyone could ever ask to be a part of. That’s worth celebrating.
