Her words brought me to tears. Tommy and I had been watching the latest season of The Chosen, a free streaming show about the life of Jesus and his closest followers. Afterwards there’s an opportunity for viewers to record and post their responses to the show. One woman described being homeless for the last decade and connecting with the way Jesus and his followers slept outside without roof, societal normalcy, or comforts. She identified with Peter’s anger, Andrew’s anxiety. She said, “I forgot that I was loved.”

And it struck me,

In the hustle and bustle and break-neck urgency to get 2-day shipping. 

In the ending of one school semester and in the great breath before the next one begins. 

In the depression and loneliness.

In the changes of tradition.

Or the missing faces at your table.

Or the children that should be in your arms but aren’t.

For all the joys and woes bound up in that word—Christmas

Have you forgotten that you’re loved?

During the holidays, the senses stir our remembrance. For me it’s the smell of snow and burning wood, sounds of a fire crackling, carols on the piano. The taste of Mom’s sausage balls and homemade cocoa. Lights twinkling in the dark. The ache of cold in my lungs and the anticipation in my stomach.

I grew up in the hills of West Virginia, our neighborhood a place where snow ploughs rarely tread. One winter when I was fourteen or fifteen, it snowed from the afternoon into late evening, at least half a foot. It finally stopped long after bedtime, but my dad and I bundled up, grabbed shovels out of the garage, and began to dig ourselves out.

Our steep driveway met a second steep road that connected to other houses in the neighborhood, and we talked and shoveled until our house was out of sight. 

I can’t remember what we discussed, but I know the spot on the road where we paused for breath. On one side of us, a grove of evergreens hibernated, their boughs heavy with snow. On the other side, leafless maples, poplars, and oaks towered against a moon-stark sky. Through it all lay the great hush. All sound absorbed inside the pristine and unbroken white.

Although I was cold and tired and perpetually conscious that this might be my father’s last winter alive, I remember most of all a sense of peace. The knowing, I might be weary now, but tomorrow there won’t be school. There’ll be a fire in the hearth and books on the couch and marshmallows for the cocoa. So it doesn’t matter what I have to do tonight. Tomorrow will make it all worthwhile.

Sixteen years later, I smell snow on a moon-washed night and suddenly I long to go back. To be a child once more. And the bittersweetness sets in because no one has a memory built only of the good. The Ghost of Christmas Past can also bring sorrow and tears. Memories of disappointment, grief, wet socks, and icy roads, that first Christmas morning without you.

And within that wool coat of memory, it’s easy to forget the basic, essential truth that underpins all of Christmas.

For God so loved.

It’s Jack’s second Christmas and there’s no scratchy wool on his coat yet. Every morning is met with joy as he patters out of his room to find his trucks and cars still lined up beside the couch and a box of cereal on the counter. If he has any memories of this holiday, it’ll be Hot Wheels Cars and the sounds of his grandparents’ voices. 

There’s no way, no means, of sparing him from a future tainted by reality. I simply don’t want him to ever forget the truth. 

That God came into the world, at first in the form of rapidly dividing cells, into a newborn, a toddler, a boy, a man. At all points, fully God and fully human, miraculous and incomprehensible but finally touchable. His life turned history on its head and brought people to their knees. 

Strange to think that there were thousands of December twenty-fifths before his arrival. The sun rose and set into an early night without fanfare or collective notice. And then one year, he appeared, a spark in the darkness much like his strange star in the sky. 

The spark that brought hope where there had been no hope. I love the way it’s put in the book of Isaiah, “I will give you a covenant for the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes that are blind, to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in darkness.” [1]

The spark came, despite our failure to save ourselves. Despite our broken relationships and struggles with anger and depression and anxiety. In spite of the darkness of all the Christmases past. The Christmas you might be facing.

The feeling that came to me on the road that winter’s night, the profound knowing that the dark is for a moment and tomorrow brings a new light, that’s the feeling I pray for you. Someday, this moment won’t matter. Christmas is coming. 

Have you forgotten that you’re loved?

Because you are.

[1] Isaiah 42:6b-7