Midweek Message
The pop song may proclaim “it’s the most wonderful time of the year,” but for many folks, December is a difficult month. With the days getting shorter and the nights coming on earlier, many people experience the down-turned spirits of Seasonal Affective Disorder. And for those who have lost a loved one, the holidays can be especially difficult. My dad died in December over thirty years ago, and today is the twentieth anniversary of Tracy’s dad’s death. December can be a hard month for a lot of people.
Ever since this season became tenderized by the experience of grief and loss, I have found myself drawn to another song. It’s not one of the most popular or beloved of the Christmas songs, but it can be found in our hymnal (#221). The words were written by a 19th century English poet, Christina Rosetti, who suffered poor health from a young age. Her words were set to a soft, gentle tune from the composer Gustav Holst. It’s the hymn “In the Bleak Midwinter.”
In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.
She draws from an old tradition that it snowed on the evening of Christ’s birth, blanketing the fallen world with pure white. And even though I later learned that scholars believe Jesus may have actually been born during the summertime (when traveling to your hometown to register for a census would have made more sense), I still prefer thinking he was born “in the bleak midwinter.” The early church apparently preferred this timing, too, and so they set the celebration of Christmas to coincide with the winter solstice, the so-called “longest night,” which is the point when the land’s deepening darkness reverses, the light returns, and the days begin to lengthen again.
I still draw comfort and hope in thinking that it was “in the bleak midwinter,” around the time of the longest night of the year, that Jesus, the Light of the World, was born into this world. However bleak our lives may feel, or the news of our world may seem, that’s precisely when Jesus first came, and when Jesus still comes, even today.
