The Good Grief of Advent: Living in the Longing
โI think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming, but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel. I just don’t understand Christmas, I guess. I like getting presents and sending Christmas cards and decorating trees and all that, but I’m still not happy. I always end up feeling depressed.โ
Charlie Brown in A Charlie Brown Christmas
You know the scene. Charlie Brown has been dealing with more than his share of the winter blues. Leaning on their iconic brick wall, he confesses to his good friend Linus that, despite all the holly jolly festivities, he canโt seem to feel happy. This is the time of year I am most like Charlie Brown in that famous 1965 TV special. The โholiday seasonโ is here, and Iโm not feeling it. It’s not just me, though. Many have a hard time conjuring the seemingly expected happiness. For us, such emotion is elusive this time of year. Therefore, it’s appropriate that Advent is here to give voice to our melancholy.
A Season of Grief
Like Charlie Brown, in the face of all the festivities, I end up feeling depressed. I lack the energy. I donโt want to shop for presents. And I certainly donโt want to be with people. No number of colored lights blinking on a thousand homes can illuminate the kind of darkness I feel this time of year.
Of course, as alone as I feel in the cold darkness at the cusp of winter, Iโm far from alone in this experience. Itโs shared across a broad swath of people. For some, itโs because the holidays call to mind the people theyโve lost. For others, it raises the fear of family conflict and pours salt on past wounds. And then, for some, like me, itโs because our very brains turn against us this time of year.
Seasonal Affective Disorder makes it hard for me to function in December. Getting out of bed is a chore. Stringing thoughts together takes substantial effort. It has taken me two weeks to finish this article. At the very time of year when church activities and social functions increase, I am at my weakest. This is not ideal for anyone, much less a priest. Nothing makes sense. Like King David, I ask,
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
Psalm 43:5
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Advent is for the Broken
However, Charlie Brownโs lack of joy in the seasonโand my ownโpoints to our own brokenness. Whatever its source, it reminds us that this world is not as it should be, and we desperately long for it to be made right.
We often speak of Advent as remembering Israelโs longing for the coming Messiah. Thus, Christmas becomes the time we remember Christโs birth. However, there is another longing that Advent recallsโour own, here between his Ascension and Second Coming. Israel longed for a savior to deliver them from their perceived political captors, but we know that far more than earthly principalities enslave us. We also know all that sin has wrought: every bit of creation has been marred by our fall, with suffering, sickness, and death resulting. We also know that Christ endured all the brokenness this world has to offer.
Christ arrived in a stable strewn with straw and dung when he was born in Bethlehem. He entered the grime of this world from his first breath onward. He faced humanityโs beauty and brokenness from the crรฉche to the cross. In his crucifixion and death,
He was despised and rejected by men,
Isaiah 53:3a
a man of sorrows and acquainted with griefโฆ
Advent reminds us that we live in the liminal stateโthe time between the times. We still await the day that is not here, when suffering and sorrow will be no more. It gives us the moment in the church year to express our longing for that day.
Let Advent Do Its Work
Returning to Charlie Brown, we find many of his friends trying to fix him, particularly Lucy. โWhat you need is involvement,โ she says. After saddling him with the director’s duties for the neighborhood kidsโ Christmas play, which he quickly loses control of, she sends him to fetch a Christmas tree. In this, by bringing back a sparse, tiny sapling, he has failed again in the eyes of Lucy and others. They ridicule his repeated failure. He melts down.
Instead of coming beside Charlie Brown and being with him in his melancholy, Lucyโmuch like Jobโs friends before herโhad labeled what was wrong with Charlie Brown so he could quickly and cleanly remedy his problem. Only her brother Linus, his own insecurities in hand, embodied by his iconic blue blanket, journeys with Charlie Brown on his mission to obtain a tree. It is then Linus who, in the face of othersโ laughter and ridicule, speaks the one truth that brings a moment of hope into Charlie Brownโs heart.
Linus’s message is not another method by which our protagonist can fix himself. Itโs Luke chapter 2: the proclamation of Christโs arrival itself. No human โfixingโ can match the hope only God can give.
A Companion in the Grief
The season of Advent, like Linus, meets and comes alongside us. It gives us a chance to voice our lament that weโre in a broken world that has not yet been made whole. Advent resonates with us the age-old, oft-repeated cry in Scripture, โHow long, O Lord?โ
Advent is a solemn yet hopeful expression of the reality that Christโs work has been accomplished but not consummated. Even as we mourn, cry, and experience life’s current pain, Advent voices the truth that a day will come when โHe will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed awayโ (Rev. 21:4). It comforts us with Christโs assurance, โI am making all things newโ (Rev. 21:5).
Image rendered by Jacob Davis / Components courtesy of Canva.