It’s a Blue Christmas this year. My wife was disabled for a while from hip pain. That made Christmas prep tough. We decided not to have Christmas at our house this year, so the tree and trimmings stayed in storage. I never seemed to find the time or spirit to do Christmas cards. I passed on our yearly family reunion on the weakest of excuses. We used to enjoy shopping trips for presents, now we just park ourselves in front of our laptops and explore Amazon. That doesn’t stir up a lot of nostalgia. Pretty blue. Not as blue as years in which we lost family members. The first Christmas after a death in the family is deeply blue. Some churches have Blue Christmas services aimed at those mourning and suffering during the holidays.
It’s not that our lives haven’t been good there’s just something about Christmas this year. The red, green and gold and snowy white doesn’t seem right. It’s a Blue Christmas.
Upon further thought, perhaps Blue is the proper color of Christmas. Red and green are colors of celebration and partying. You celebrate the completion of a thing. That’s not Christmas. Christmas is more a promise and hope of a thing. Christmas means God is there and has love for man, but there is the shadow of a cross over the manager. There is still suffering and death to come. There is the possibility of relationship with God but the perfection of that relationship remains a future event.
Blue is the proper Christmas color. It can be the sky blue color of the underside of heaven our proper home. It can be the deep ocean blue reminding us of the depth and beauty of his love and grace. It can be the royal blue of the coming king or the baby blue of the child in the manager. Blue may not be the brightest and cheeriest of colors, but it is a beautiful hue.
I think this is a Blue Christmas and maybe that’s a right and proper thing.
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