Somehow, in this the year of our Lord 2024, I fortuitously got locked out of my WordPress account.
They changed the login screen; the password saved in my password manager no longer worked; everything was anarchy. I knew exactly how to solve the problem but could not spare the time or mental energy to do so in this desperate sprint to the end of the year.
In retrospect, I’m quite glad of this.
I believe my posts prior to now would have been hasty sketches of a woman bewildered by the sharp turnaround between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year: a complaint about the materialism of Christmas that has seeped even into Christian celebrations, an exploration of how to balance the stress of work and home and Christmas chores, a meditation on how at least I managed to keep up with my Advent devotional in spite of it all.
But I was locked out and I did none of those things. I wrapped and baked and went to festive gatherings and sent cards two weeks later than usual and tolerated the people I always have to tolerate this time of year. I made it to the Christmas break with a sense of profound relief and a deep desire to sort myself out before the New Year launches me into the stratosphere again.
But now I can access my account again, and now I want to offer something for the season: a memory that feel more Christmas to me than all the Christmas activity of the past three weeks combined.
This memory is simple: a bright-lit Christmas tree on a grave.
I am referring to my mother’s grave, of course. We visit every year because we still feel compelled somehow, as best we can, to include her in the proceedings. “That girl loved Christmas,” my dad says, fondly, and it’s true. She looked forward to the holidays more than any time of the year and expended no little effort and energy to make them magical for everyone.
As a result, I always feel her loss more keenly this time of year.
But I have been growing, I thought. Coming to terms with grief. The sharp edge of sorrow has blunted a bit over two years. Spirits were high in our family this year and we’d spent the day joking and laughing. Visiting the grave didn’t seem like a sorrowful thing: it felt right and good, and I knew Mom would be delighted by our determined cheer in the face of the holiday season.
Still, my heart cracked at the sight of the tree.
We visited at night instead of during the day, and so this year I saw the tiny Christmas tree in a way I hadn’t before. My dad puts it there, anchors it to the earth, decorates it with strings of blue and white lights and tiny ornaments. I’ve seen it under the sunlight several times but somehow in the dark of a late December evening the sight of it choked me up.
That tiny little tree on that grave looked so impossibly small in the dark, overwhelmed by the vast darkness all around it. I stood there staring at it, unaccountably sad at the thought of how lonely it all looked, almost foolish: as though a Christmas tree, carefully lit, had any place in a graveyard that holds the memory of death and decay and sorrow.
But that is, of course, the entire point.
It is a sort of foolishness, a holy one. And it is the foolishness of Christmas to believe not only that Jesus came but that He is coming back. To believe that everything has already been accomplished and that we will witness the fulfillment of it all, the great setting-right of all things.
The manger requires the cross; the cross requires the resurrection; the resurrection heralds the return. And we live time-bound, as Christ did in his Incarnation, unable to see behind or what is ahead, depending on the testimonies of those who came before us and the affirmation of the indwelling Holy Spirit.
My mother left a letter for me before she died, to be opened upon her death. Written in hilariously large 16-point font, and somehow printed like a booklet, the letter ends with this:
“I refuse to say goodbye because it isn’t a final goodbye, so I will close with this. I love you very much!!!!!!!!!!”
There’s a deep defiance in that simple close, a defiance I am reminded of every time I hear the sundry discourses of what seems like almost everyone on religion: how foolish it is to believe in anything but yourself, how foolish it is to pretend there is an afterlife or that there’s a God or that He cares at all, how very unfashionable it is have to hope or to love deeply and sincerely or to let yourself be hurt.
Again: a holy foolishness.
We didn’t stay long. The winter air was cold and we were scared the cemetery gate might close, so we paid our respects and then Dad slowly eased the car down the winding road from the hill where Mom is buried. I kept my eyes on that tree, that little bright-shining tree, until it disappeared behind us and we reached the main road.
That little sparkling lights—that hopeful sparkling light. More to come, God promises. One day soon.
Last night at the Christmas Eve service, we were reminded that “there is a way that leads to death.” Given the state of the world, it sometimes feels that every way leads to death. Our culture is sick and dying; our country sick and dying; so many things, sick and dying. But there is a way that leads to life, bright and beautiful, absurd on the face: hopeful when there should be no hope, full of love in the face of hurt and death, serving when the world demands selfishness. I pray I too can embody a holy foolishness, a disregard for what the world tells me is real, and pin my belief on the love that spoke to shepherds first.
Merry Christmas.
Samaritan's Song 