A Time for Lament
By Brett Carey
“It’s the most wonderful time of the year!” In my childhood, lyrics such as these were one of the many cultural voices telling me, explicitly or implicitly, that Christmas was all about joy. My early memories of Christmas are rose-colored recollections of me and my siblings waking up to presents underneath our family’s tree. As I got older, I would look back to these early Christmases and strive to achieve that feeling of pure, unadulterated joy without success. Thus I began to identify with Charlie Brown’s sentiment from the classic Christmas special: “I just don't understand Christmas I guess. I like getting presents and sending Christmas cards and decorating trees and all that, but I'm still not happy.” [1]
Joy is one of the four traditional Advent themes and it is rightly needed during the often dark and dreary winter months. But untempered joy can just as easily invalidate the very real difficulty of the Christmas season experienced by so many. The culture-wide expectation, fueled by picture-perfect advertisements, that Christmas must be a joyful celebration marked by exchanging gifts with loved ones leaves little room for those hurting from a recent breakup, the death of a loved-one, or any number of other tragedies. [2] Their feelings of grief, loneliness, and stress may even be exacerbated by their failure to have a joyful Christmas. [3] Again, the words of Charlie Brown are fitting “I know nobody likes me. Why do we have to have a holiday season to emphasize it?” [4]
It is even more unfortunate that culturally mandated joy can inflict such a cruel compounding of suffering because it misses the underlying Christian message of Advent and Christmas. Advent in particular is meant to be a period of waiting before Christmas where we acknowledge the darkness of our lives and our world so that we might know our need for a Savior. As the priest Fleming Rutledge puts it so succinctly, “Advent begins in the dark and moves toward the light.” [5] Similarly, the Gospel of Matthew says that God’s incarnation in Jesus was the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy that “the people dwelling in darkness have seen a great light, and for those dwelling in the region and shadow of death, on them a light has dawned.” [6] The event celebrated at Christmas and anticipated during Advent, God coming down to the world as a man, demonstrates His loving concern for His creation which has become captive to sin and darkness. It is also the means by which God takes on the suffering of the world as we experience it. Jesus demonstrates this in His suffering on the cross, but also poignantly in John's Gospel, when He arrives too late to prevent Lazarus from dying. As God, Jesus knows that He can and will resurrect Lazarus. And yet He pauses to lament the loss of His beloved friend. John simply writes, “Jesus wept.” [7]
Advent should be a time in which Christians join in their Savior’s lament. This looks like grieving over our personal tragedies, but it also means lamenting with others, especially those who may feel isolated in their grief by the season. Paradoxically, lament is the way to prepare for the joy that awaits at Christmas. Only by spending time grieving the darkness do we fully understand why the bright hope of Christ’s redemption is such good news.
[1] Peanuts, special, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” directed by Bill Melendez, written by Charles Schulz, aired December 9, 1965, on CBS, https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/a-charlie-brown-christmas/umc.cmc.mbxalimrwrtq72wj4h601pyf?action=play.
[2] Kim, Jonathan. “Why 'A Charlie Brown Christmas' Remains A Subversive, Anomalous Classic.” Medium. ReThink Reviews, December 11, 2018. https://medium.com/rethink-reviews/why-a-charlie-brown-christmas-remains-a-subversive-anomalous-classic-c11b8bd285b5.
[3] “Tips for Coping with Holiday Stress.” Mayo Clinic. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, December 11, 2020.
[4] Peanuts, special, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” directed by Bill Melendez, written by Charles Schulz, aired December 9, 1965, on CBS, https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/a-charlie-brown-christmas/umc.cmc.mbxalimrwrtq72wj4h601pyf?action=play.
[5] Rutledge, Fleming. Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018.
[6] Matt. 4:16 ESV
[7] John 11:35 ESV
Brett Carey is a fourth year at UVA studying Economics.
