I have trouble with Christmas. There. I’ve spoken what’s true for me, knowing that it’s not at all culturally fashionable to have trouble with Christmas. It’s a little like saying you don’t like puppies or chocolate, both of which, incidentally, I do like. But there it is.

In the first place, I don’t have very good memories of childhood Christmases. Often, it was a more-than-usually tempestuous time in an already-stormy life. And with childhood innocence and naivete, I always thought this Christmas would be better. Until it wasn’t.

Fast-forward to adulthood. The Jesus story simply isn’t my story in the same way it is for Christians. Just as Muhammad’s story isn’t my story in the same way it is for Muslims. And I can’t get into the cultural excesses of the season. It feels like the whole culture is having a party and I wasn’t invited. The profit-driven commercialization of it all saddens me. That stores have Christmas decorations and merchandise out before Halloween strikes me as ludicrous.

In the face of all that, I’d figured out what worked for me—minimalism, focusing on Solstice, the interplay of darkness and light, growth resting, a few carefully-selected Christmas concerts, and the quiet of land blanketed by fresh snowfall. Spending Christmas with my daughter and her family.

Then, I met and married Tom. My husband comes from a big family and a long tradition of over-the-top Christmas decorating and activity. As we blended our traditions, we have maintained that to a significant extent. To my minimalist eyes and personality, a lot of it looks like clutter. A wreath, some candles, and a holiday tablecloth would do nicely, thank you.

Despite all this, especially as I’ve gotten older, I’ve at least made an uneasy peace with it all. And a large part of that is my deepening appreciation of the ways in which the mysteriousness of life pokes through our days in the most ordinary of ways. The biblical account of Jesus’ birth reminds me that he was born as a helpless, squalling baby, the most ordinary and miraculous of events. Yet the shepherds and magi came, and wondered, awestruck. No understanding of human reproductive biology lessens how breathtaking the creation of a whole new human being is.

My husband’s family background is Catholic Christian, and we have a nativity set that has its special place on the sideboard in our dining room. As I set the stable out, rearranging the straw that was jumbled during storage, and position the figures, I catch a sense of the quiet of Christmas, the hush of night, the hovering mystery.

I do enjoy Christmas carols, although I struggle with the theology of many of them, and with their ceaselessly being played in stores. But I’ve discovered instrumental renderings of those melodies on traditional instruments such as dulcimers, folk guitars, lutes and mandolins. I am fond of Christmas carols played on bagpipes, too, which mysteriously touch something in my Scottish genes.

As UU Ministers Association President Cheryl M. Walker noted in a recent newsletter, this time of year with its unrelenting emphasis on happiness, good cheer, and joy and does not leave space for the sadness, anger, and despair we may feel due to personal, national or global circumstances. We can nonetheless hold space for ourselves and for others to feel what we feel and to know that it’s OK. We can witness each other’s reality, whatever it is. That might just be the greatest Christmas gift we can give someone, or ourselves.

I also hold close what is important to me in this season around the edges of our blended traditions. I can pause in all the clutter and busyness to note what’s always been central to me in this time: the turning of the seasons and the importance of the fallow time of winter. Winter’s fallow time calls me to the experience of mystery. It’s cold, seemingly lifeless, barren. Nonetheless, beneath the apparent lifelessness, important things are happening. Seeds are resting, maturing so that they can come forth in the green shoots of spring. Animals are hibernating, or have migrated to warmer climates, preparing to awaken or to return. While some have left or hidden themselves away, others, like the little juncos in their bird-sized tuxedos, have returned.

Solstice has always been more significant for me than Christmas. I’m much happier when there is more light. I celebrate the lengthening of days, the return of the light that has diminished over the previous months. I welcome its promise of warmth. As I light candles, I recall the mystery of how the light always returns. No matter what my intellectual understanding of the physics of solstice is, I’m struck again by the way it opens out into something greater in its transcendence of the ordinary.

Whatever your traditions, whatever your hopes and dreams and needs for this complicated season may be, know that we’re all held in an endless web of life and in the blessing of community.

~Rev. Julia