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Created on Wednesday, 13 December 2017 09:31

Battling the Christmas blues

By Dave Myers

Southwest Kansas Catholic

    ‘Tis the season for joy and good cheer! For celebrating gift giving (and the guilty pleasure of gift receiving!). For looking with renewed appreciation at the Christ child and his Holy Family.            

    ‘Tis the season when people who are struggling with depression are pulled down even farther, as if gravity has suddenly become two-fold. Walking through a department store, with the music and the decoration, can become like an emotional workout, leaving one tired and even more depressed.

The jingle bells are jingling

The streets are white with snow

The happy crowds are mingling

But there’s no one that I know

I’m sure that you’ll forgive me

If I don’t enthuse

I guess I’ve got the Christmas blues

    I’m supposed to be happy! What am I doing wrong? This is what happens to those walking in sadness when cheerfulness is supposed to reign.

    It can be addiction bringing you down. Or a loved one suffering illness. Your own serious illness, perhaps. Struggling with the loss of a friend or family member. Perhaps you’ve been cheated or have fallen victim. Maybe it’s financial troubles. Divorce, maybe. Or just maybe it’s a mix of little things that add up to one big ... pile.

I’ve done my window shopping

There’s not a store I’ve missed

But what’s the use of stopping

When there’s no one on your list

You’ll know the way I’m feeling

When you love and you lose

I guess I’ve got the Christmas blues

Any of these can make the Christmas season seem like something to be avoided, to be gotten through, to be survived.

    Sometimes it’s not the commercialism—the focus on gift-buying superseding the quiet reflection of the coming Christ. Sometimes it’s none of that. Sometimes it’s just the blues. No rhyme or reason.

When somebody wants you

Somebody needs you

Christmas is a joy of joy

But friends when you’re lonely

You’ll find that it’s only

A thing for little girls and little boys

May all your days be merry

Your seasons full of cheer

But ‘til it’s January

I’ll just go and disappear

Oh Santa may have brought you

Some stars for your shoes

But Santa only brought me the blues

Those brightly packaged tinsel covered Christmas blues

    Perhaps Christmas shouldn’t be a time when people are filled with such elation. That elation comes from the love of family and friends joined in celebration of Christ’s birth, and not all of us are so lucky.

    Perhaps instead, it should be a time of unburdening. A time when we celebrate the anniversary of this incredible gift who is the ultimate unburdening of all our sorrows, all our blues. It’s a time that brought the beginning of the end (the end being the beginning!) the joining of us with the Christ, BFFs for all eternity.

    It should be a time that tells you, no matter what troubling things are going on in your life, thanks to this wonderful Christmas gift of the Christ child, the best is yet to come.

    The best is always yet to come.

    The best is always yet to come!

    (Lyrics of song by David Jack Holt.)