Blue Christmas? You Can Dance If You Want To.

We sat around the table, my husband, my mother and me; Christmas lights draped from the restaurant’s ceiling beams, seasonal music playing softly in the background. I glanced at my mother, catching her just as she wiped a tear from her eye. I stopped to listen to the song which played.

It was Elvis singing; I’ll have a blue Christmas, without you.

I have to be honest. I think that song has got to be among my least favorites in the entire Christmas music catalog, and I’m not sure it represents Elvis at his musical best. I usually change the station when I hear Elvis singing the intro in his halting, bluesy style. The song just never packed much of an emotional punch for me.

But my mother had just buried her husband of thirty-three years. She was facing her first Christmas without him.

Christmas is supposed to be a time of great joy, of celebration with family and friends gathered all around. But each of us, I imagine, has experienced a season when maybe we just weren’t feeling it. Some may have lost a family member during the preceding year; others may be estranged from a loved one. Headlines confirm ongoing economic uncertainty.

In her book, God in the Yard, L.L. Barkat wrote about the value of experiencing grief in order to enter more fully into seasons of celebration. Recalling a childhood history which included both divorce and alcoholism, Barkat wrote:

David Whyte says we spend too little time experiencing griefs, so they stay hidden, and our joy stays hidden with them. “It is as if the two are simply two ends of the same whole. Remove the experience at one end of the scale by curtailing our capacity for grief and the whole emotional body shrinks to a bland middle, curtailing equally our capacity for joy.”

In his series on the life of David, my pastor preached about the song of lament Israel’s future king wrote following the deaths of Jonathan and Saul. Scripture says David tore his clothes, wept, and fasted; he and all the men who were with him. David then said his song should be taught to the people of Judah, so that future generations could join in grieving the fall of Israel’s anointed.

Several chapters later scripture paints a picture of David at the other end of the emotional spectrum, dancing before the Lord as the Ark of the Covenant was returned to Jerusalem. David’s joy was so unrestrained that his wife voiced contempt for him. Unfazed, his response to her in 2 Samuel 6: 21 was, “. . . I will make merry before the LORD.” David danced even after seeing one of his men struck down for demonstrating carelessness in approaching God in his holiness. Giving voice to the depth of his true grief, and knowing his utter unworthiness to receive mercy from a holy God, freed David to dance and make merry with unapologetic joy.

The year I lost my father, just two weeks before Christmas, was the season I learned to love the holiday most dearly. Every year I read articles and listen to conversations about how best to keep Christmas celebrations centered on Christ. Maybe the best way to do so is by fully entering into the blue-ness of the season, daring ourselves to tell the truth about what’s messed up, broken, and sad in our lives. Because when life is all hunky-dory, I don’t know how desperately I need tidings of comfort and joy. Without entering into grief and sadness, I don’t really know how much I need Jesus.

“Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things,” Shakespeare told his audience at the end of his tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. Perhaps doing likewise will pave the way for a merrier, more Christ-centered Christmas this year. He came to make his blessings flow, far as the curse is found.

You can dance if you want to.

David Whyte, cited in: Barkat, L.L. God In the Yard: Spiritual Practice For the Rest of Us. Ossining, NY: T.S. Poetry Press, 2010, pp. 105-106.

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