I haven’t had yuletide goose bumps yet.  I might be too late, since my kids told me this morning that today is Christmas Eve. If I expect to get any warm soul fuzzies, I’d better get cracking.  

Sometimes the Christmas rush lasts for a month or more. The cold sky always looks bright. My kitchen is full of creativity. The children are giddy. Some years the trees are prettier and the lights along my front porch are perfectly straight. In truth, the celebratory mood often rises, not out of any profound belief in the significance of the nativity, but because happy things are swirling around me. In shorthand, good situations equal good feelings.

 Not this year. With a crisis to navigate and a dark emotional sky overhead, I have no reason to feel the joyous rush of Joyeux Noël. The ornamental displays feel like frauds, the lights swallowed up in darkness. I imagine half the world feels as I do, perhaps finding Christmas gloom and Christmas glee oddly juxtaposed.  

Yet there is great blessing in this year’s melancholy. When the pretty, empty things contribute to my perceived joy, the truth of the Nativity gets covered up by so many cheap substitutes. On this particular Christmas Eve, my theology actually means something. Its profound meaning has become the music in my house, the fire in my fireplace, the rum in my eggnog. I can affirm with my mouth that Jesus Christ is not only the hope of the world, but my hope. Despair is not an option for you and me, we who know that when the lights come down, the Christ child still lives.  

There’s no doubt that in the Christmases to come, I will get goose bumps once again from all those pretty things. God would not ask me to take them all down in some pious show of holiness. But for this year, Jesus is enough. He is not merely a part of nice-American-things-to-celebrate, but he has become the entire celebration. When the other things cannot penetrate my spirit, then I am unexpectedly blessed. Jesus Christ stands out today. The darkness in my spirit has made his light brighter on this Christmas Eve.  

For you who are in despair this night, remember the words of the Psalmist who says, “ . . . but even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you.”