Blue Christmas

T’was the night before Christmas
And all through the Country
A message was Ringing
Yet no one Care nigh.
The plague has beguiled Us.
The craze has embodied Us.
The holidays are here!
We must not adhere!
Science is fake.
Science speaks nonsense.
Science fences.
Science?

T’was the night before Christmas
And all through the world
Weeping surrounds us
As souls tumble in furl.
Souls Who chose not to listen.
Souls who listened
But those around them
Did not.
Souls who scream for something different
For relief
That comes only with death
For many, such breadth. Continue reading “A Christmas Lament by Karen Leslie Hernandez”

I grew up with a beautiful Solstice tradition: the Blue Christmas service. Each year, on or near the darkest night, our churches would offer a ceremony to remember those who had passed that year and hold space for the specific pain of holidays without loved ones we so sorely miss. Christmas itself named a broader pain, of injustice, of our many earthly wounds, and it offered a word of hope, of healing: a vision and promise of justpeace for all Creation. But Blue Christmas was different.

Blue Christmas said, sure – there is much work to do. If we really want to be vessels of a mighty Spirit of Love, we’ve got to roll up our sleeves and get to work! But… not tonight. Tonight, our work is to pause. To look away from the holy preparations of Advent, from the festive and the merry, and from the coming cruciform Birth. To be still. To turn toward pain we do not want to face. To allow ourselves to rest a moment, in Mighty Arms of Love. And to light a candle.