Finding Grief in a Season of Joy

The Massacre of the Innocents, Francois-Joseph Navez

I bet you've never heard a Christmas sermon with that title.  In December, unhappy people are called Grinches and Scrooges.  If you're not super-religious, fa-la-la and tinsel are supposed to make all your troubles seem miles away.  If you are devout, the thought of God becoming man to secure our salvation should cause you to rejoice all season long.

 I think that in our joy we forget that Jesus' birth was not all angels and expensive presents.  If you read the Christmas story, there is much grief and pain as well.  The first Christmas was not a day of flippant happiness, but rather a bittersweet time for all involved.  Since my Christmas this year is more bitter than ever but also more sweet than ever, I'm glad that God didn't just record the cheerful highlights for us in His Word.  In the last couple of weeks I've been pondering the grief of Christmas, since every time I see a Christmas card with a little baby boy on it I have to hold back tears.

I've already waxed eloquent on how much Christmas cost God, so I'll not belabor that point.  Besides, sometimes it's easy to write God off as, well, super-human.  But the humans who played a part in Christmas suffered quite a bit too.

First, there was Mary.  How many dreams did she have to let go of for the Christmas story to be written?  The dream of a trouble-free marriage in her little town.  The dream of having her first child in her new home with the village midwife making jokes about whether the baby looked more like his mother or father.  The dream of seeing her own mother and father's unbridled joy when they held their grandson for the first time.  In a time when childbearing was seen as the height of a woman's existence and when adultery was punishable by death, to have her hopes for a beautiful, normal family dashed must have been very difficult.  How many tears she must have shed as she coped with her never-the-same-again life!  Then she gave birth in a barn and had no bed for her first-born son but a feed trough.

 And Joseph.  How many disparaging comments did he have to endure for the rest of his life because God became man?  For this young couple, the grief that resulted from the Christmas story lasted all their lives. 

When they took Jesus to the temple on his 8th day, they met a prophet named Simeon.  Seconds after praising the Lord for sending salvation through this tiny baby, Simeon looked at Mary and told her that, because of her son, a sword would pierce even her own soul...just the kind of thing a first-time-mom wants to hear.  That verse in Luke 2 is NOT the one we put on our Christmas cards.

 But the people you might never have considered were all the families living in Bethlehem and the surrounding areas when Jesus was born.  You see, any baby boy 2 years old and under in the region was murdered by Herod's soldiers because Herod didn't want anyone challenging his kingship.  This part of the Christmas story always struck me as grotesque when I was a young girl, and now as a mother, it breaks my heart.  As a mother who has lost a baby boy, it makes me sick to my stomach to think of what that day in Bethlehem must have been like.  How many women "refused to be comforted" (Mat. 2:18) because of Christmas?

The first Christmas brought great joy and great sorrow.  Jesus was an incredible gift who came at an incredible cost - to the Trinity, to His earthly family, and to many other families as well.  Don't let the jingle bells keep you from contemplating the grief of Christmas.  It won't make you a grinch.