Blue Christmas Heart

I’ve always loved everything about Christmas. With the loss of my two parents nine months ago, this Christmas is quite different. Now, decades later, I am more closely relating to how my mother must have felt trying to make Christmas joyful for us kids. The loss of her mother (my maternal grandmother) came to the forefront every Christmas Eve. (I wrote about it in my memoir in Chapter 29- The Gift of Life).

This year I’m trying to focus on the joy new babies in the family bring. One niece has 2 baby boys – 5 months and 19 months. She’s a neo-natal hospice nurse. She’s asked me to go to Blue Christmas Service at her place of worship on the 21st because she fully understands through her heart-wrenching work, that Christmas is not a happy time for everyone for many different reasons.

I’d like to share this writing by George Matthew Adams called the “Christmas Heart.” It puts the focus on Christmas where it ought to be. The baby Jesus symbolizes many things but most of all hope for our world and the future.

“Let us remember that the Christmas heart is a giving heart, a wide open heart that thinks of others first. The birth of the baby Jesus stands as the most significant event in all history, because it has meant the pouring into a sick world the healing medicine of love which has transformed all manner of hearts for almost two thousand years… Underneath all the bulging bundles is this beating Christmas heart.”