How Can We Say “Merry Christmas” This Year?

If Advent is the season of hope, then Christmas is the season of hope realized in the birth of the Christ child. We remember his story in our Scriptures. We remember and relive that story with joy, even in the midst of struggle. 

Indeed, we have struggled this year. Covid has killed more than a million worldwide. Many of you have been sick or had illness in your families. Some of you have seen the death of family members, friends or colleagues. And, this year, like no other, has revealed the pain and cruelty of racism, as Covid-19 has disproportionately sickened and killed people of color and  indigenous people.

We have struggled friends, but not just with the pandemic. We also have struggled with typhoons and floods, with political strife and violence, with divisiveness in our own church.  In a season that is supposed to be about celebration, there seems to be far too much loss and grief.   

How is it, then, that anyone could wish any of us a “Merry Christmas?” Maybe the answer is in seeing the hope in the struggle.  It was after all, in the midst of exile and struggle that the Prophet Isaiah saw the hope in the anticipated coming of a Messiah.  And in that hope there was joy. He proclaimed in Isaiah 9:

A Messiah was promised to a people who struggled. Christ was born in the midst of struggle. Christ will come again despite our struggles.

Indeed, it is already happening. Christ has come again in the comfort given by healthcare workers, chaplains and others who continue to care for patients, at the risk of their own health and lives, even when some in their communities dismiss the pandemic and its impact. Christ has come in the researchers and the drug makers who have devised multiple vaccines in record time and in those who are working to distribute them. Christ has come and is coming in and through all of those who will work to ensure that the most vulnerable among us get a vaccine.  

Christ comes on the winds of hope and on the commitments of people who act ethically, think about the needs and welfare of their neighbors, care for the least of these, and work to bring a healing touch to the world.  Christ comes on the winds of hope and on the commitments of such people—of people like you.

So have a Merry Christmas. Have a joyful and hopeful Christmas, despite the struggle. Because Christ has come and is coming and will come again.