Christ’s Light In Our Dark Winter

Merry Christmas! Dear readers, I hope you are celebrating the incarnation of our God in style, with joy and laughter and good food and good cheer, surrounded by people you love. I awoke this morning in my childhood bed, in my parents’ home, and will gather around the tree with my siblings and nieces. For us it is a day of feasting and fun and a Christmas much like any other. Vigil has been kept, Advent observed, and now it is time to celebrate the Christ child.

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago. 

But for some, this is a dark Christmas, no holy day of joy. In these plague times, there are many—more numerous online than out in the country—who have let fear prevent them from celebrating as this festival demands. I do not mean those who, having counted the social costs and weighed all medical concerns, prudently limit some features of their parties. I mean those for whom it is an offense that you and I might in fact treat this Christmas like any other. There are some for whom the dreary chants, rituals, and attire of Covid-mitigation have been a kind of balm for their soul. They find comfort in the man-made crisis, with all its rules and terror. And as I think of all these poor souls in the midst of their dark winter, here at the end of Advent, I recall this poem by Christina Rossetti.