Blue Christmas: The Light Will Overcome

I first heard the name, “Blue Christmas” in 2015. Before that, I hadn’t given the Winter Solstice much thought. It didn’t seem to connect to anything I saw in my faith traditions. But when I learned about the longest night of the year’s place in the church year calendar, I knew it was something I needed to embrace.

Blue Christmas falls on the shortest day and longest night of the year. It is a time to reflect and lament the hurt and brokenness that exists in the world and acknowledge that God hears and sees us calling out to Him in our deepest need. Everything about this echoes the heart of Advent.

Historically, Jesus wasn’t born in the middle of December. It wasn’t until the year 336 AD that emperor Constantine formalized the celebration on December 25. But nothing is created in a vacuum. Within the Greco-Roman world, this was already a time for celebrating a return to the longer days of light.

Author and speaker Kate Bowler comments on this in her Advent devotional, The Season of Waiting, and waiting . . . and waiting . . .:

“When the early church chose December 25 as the date to celebrate the Nativity, they must have been aware of the powerful symbolism of midwinter, when the seasons turn, when darkness, at long last, begins to diminish.

In one of the early medieval antiphons sung on the seven evenings before Christmas Eve, Jesus is hailed as 'O, dawn of the east, splendor of light eternal, sun of justice.'

We still sing in our carol, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel:
'O come, O Dayspring, come and cheer Our spirits
by thine Advent here, And drive away the shades of
night and pierce the clouds and bring us light.'

. . . Light is so much a part of the Advent season.” (p. 20)

But before the Light, it was dark. And if Advent teaches us anything, it’s that we need darkness in order to more clearly see the Light.

It’s more than a study in contrasts, however. It goes deeper than that. On the first day of Creation we learn that the Earth was “formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep” (Genesis 1:2). And then God says, “'Let there be light,' and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light 'day,' and the darkness he called 'night.' And there was evening, and there was morning—the first day." (Genesis 1:3b-5).

Peeling away the darkness, bringing order to chaos, restoring life—these are all acts of creation and redemption.

The answer to the darkness of grief and loneliness, fear and pain, suffering and loss is not about less darkness. The answer is found with the arrival of Light.

This is the model God initiated with Jesus’ birth. His answer to the age-old cries of His people was not to take away the oppression of empires, the casualties of disasters, famines, and wars, the chronic stain of sin. Instead, He introduced something new: The Firstborn of Creation, the Light of the World. Not to be a conquering superhero, but to sympathize with our weaknesses and enter the darkness like one of us.

Kelley Nikondeha writes in The First Advent in Palestine,

“He (Jesus) didn’t escape the heartbreak or the haunting presence of empire. He was not spared the personal trauma of loss or the difficult learning of how to live without a loved one. . . Before he carried the cross through the narrow streets of Jerusalem, his body carried loss in Nazareth. This is incarnation. Not inhabiting a body of privilege, exempt from poverty and violence, but living in a body thick with the trauma common to most in Galilee and Judea. God incarnated this pain in his own human body. It became a part of His human experience and was woven into God’s eternal memory." (p. 96)

This is vital in our understanding of Jesus’ humanity, and speaks volumes about His all-encompassing love for us. Only, there is a difference between Jesus and the common human. While He walked this Earth marked by trauma and suffering, He also carried within Himself the Light of Life.

When the Gospel-writer John chose to bypass a record of the Nativity story, he created a beautiful exploration of these truths. He opens his book with a parallel to Genesis 1:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1:1-5)

Further on, John ends chapter 16 of his Gospel with this verse, a promise from Jesus to His disciples. And to us also:

“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33).

Tonight is long. Our numerous dark nights seem to stretch endlessly before us. But tonight we name them. We acknowledge the brokenness and pain in this world and in our lives. And then we hold on to this promise: the Light will overcome.

Fleeing in the Dark

In a few days we will observe Blue Christmas, or the Longest Night of the Year. It is a time within Advent to reflect on suffering and pain and to express grief and heartbreak—while simultaneously focusing on Jesus’ promised hope.

In some ways, these last few years have felt like one long Blue Christmas. This has been a very, very long longest night. I suppose reading about Advent from a trauma-informed perspective this season hasn’t helped brighten the mood, but I am a firm believer that the muck and mire of Advent is much more real and relevant to our healing than any amount of holiday cheer and tinsel. I love twinkle lights. I love the way they softly light a room. But they only spread their glow in a darkened space.

We often talk about light piercing the darkness. And that is exactly what Jesus, Light of the World, did. But because he came to us as fully God and fully human, at Advent we celebrate “God with Us”—Immanuel. Jesus joined us in the darkness. And yes, He leads us towards the Light. But when he was still a baby and even a young man in Judea, not much had changed. He experienced heartbreak, the oppression of an empire, poverty and violence.

Kelly Nikondeha writes,

“These advent narratives reveal the Incarnation as more than God entering a human frame. They are also the revelation of God engaging with human trauma of a specific place and specific people. God experienced the excruciating reality of empires and economies from the position of the weak and powerless ones. God absorbed loss and pain in that body. The Incarnation positions Jesus among the most vulnerable people, the bereft and threatened of society. The first advent shows God wrestling with the struggles common to many the world over” (p. 102).

That first Advent, Jesus and his family had to flee for their lives. They became refugees in a foreign land. They left everything behind.

We know this was God’s will. Baby Jesus could not have been killed by Herod (the Great) before Herod Antipas got to witness his death sentence 30-odd years later. But I have always wondered at this part of the Advent story—or rather it’s brief reference. I just finished talking about Emmanuel, God with us, but when Joseph received the dream-message that Herod was on the look-out for Jewish baby boys, they quickly left. Jesus left. If ever a time was needed for saving, this was it. Mass murder happened that week. And everyone wondered, “where is God in our suffering?”

On this side of the Biblical account, we know that God was not absent. But we also know that it never seems that way in the midst of disaster and trauma. Maybe this is an example we can share when people (or ourselves) ask, “why does God allow suffering?” or “where was God when that happened?”

Jesus had arrived as a baby. It was glorious, good news of great joy! But the story wasn’t over.

The story isn’t over.

Our God is a good who prepares the way.

The long night will not last forever. But without it, we cannot see the Light.

". . . And just when everything is bearing down on us"

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’ wrote extensively on theological topics, including the incarnation and birth of Christ and Advent. Some of his great sermons where from the times he left Germany and traveled throughout Europe and across the ocean to the United States.

But when World War II began, Bonhoeffer’s deep and practical faith fueled an active resistance to Hitler’s regime. In 1943 he was imprisoned and spent much of his last years incarcerated before being killed in 1945 at the Flossenbürg concentration camp. Rather than diminishing his faith, his imprisonment bolstered his commitment to sharing a theology of suffering with those who would listen. Much of his writing from these years was in the form of letters.

The following are two quotes. One from a sermon in 1928, the other from a letter to his fiancée in 1943. Both are deeply insightful examples of trauma-informed theology, reminding us that Jesus and the Advent characters are no strangers to the hardships and pain of this world.

“Celebrating Advent means being able to wait.
Waiting is an art that our impatient age has
forgotten. It wants to break open the ripe fruit when
it has hardly finished planting the shoot.... For the
greatest, most profound, tenderest things in the
world, we must wait. It happens not here in a
storm but according to the divine laws of sprouting,
growing, and becoming.”

- from an Advent sermon, December 1928, compiled in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Christmas Sermons.

“…And just when everything is bearing down on us to
such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it,
the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our
ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil
and dark is really good and light because it comes
from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in
the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness,
succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us;
whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve
the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the
world and our lives.”

- from a letter to fiancée, Maria von Wedemeyer from prison, December 13, 1943, compiled in God is in the Manger.