For many, the holiday season can be, to say the least, emotionally complicated.
It’s usually in this season that, even in the midst of life’s struggles and sorrows, we can feel genuine gratitude for the beautiful gifts that have dropped from the sky unexpectedly and even undeservedly in our lives: the people we love, the pursuits and passions we enjoy, the places we cherish, and the past year’s opportunities that have so propitiously popped up.
But alongside this gratitude—that is, even as we survey all we’ve been given, we might also see all we’ve had to give up. And so—sometimes without even realizing it—we experience grief, at times passing but perhaps at other times persistent and profound.
And, if we’re honest, alongside our gratitude and grief, there’s the ever-present threat of grumbling. This is perhaps more keenly felt in the holiday season, because a veritable landslide of misfortunes—be it an illness, our in-laws, the endless and off-putting ads, or (for some of us) an election—are not at all as we’d prefer. ‘Tis the season, it may seem, for cynicism.
To complicate matters even further, for at least some of us, this season can bring the thought—or perhaps the threat?—of something rather sacred, whether we encounter it as a personal relic or as a still present ritual or perhaps even as a personal relationship-in-progress (or regress?).
That is, somehow inhabiting the season’s gratitude, grief, and grousing there is at least the feeling of God, or of God somehow being caught up or implicated in these feelings.
What follows is neither theological treatise nor therapeutic treatment. I’ve supposedly earned a sufficient degree to write the former, and I’ve attained some dexterity for recommending the latter. But this is only contemplation.
And, indeed, it is the contemplation of a parent.
My fifth child is now four years old.
This means, among other things, that after much trial and error, as parents, we have a fairly solid idea of how both meal times and play times can go. Imagine the following two scenarios—the first at meal time and the second at play time (both have happened often in our home):
First, imagine a child in their high chair, faced with the prospect of eating food they simply can’t stand. Whether it’s squash or spinach, cauliflower or kale, it’s obvious. They don’t like it. At all. And so looking at the disgustingly cruel gruel before them, they exclaim, “yuck!” And of course, they begin to cry.
Now hit the pause button. What’s happening in that moment? By exclaiming, “yuck!”, what is the child saying?
My wife and I are not child psychologists, but to us (and we’re probably “old school” parents), the child is expressing their disagreement, even their deep dislike and disgust, for the food that’s before them. And as “old school” parents (feel free to shame us, but at least stick with me for the sake of the illustration here), depending on their age, we might even go so far as to say that they’re being rather ungrateful.
Now consider a second scenario.
Imagine the same child at play time, fully immersed in their toys. It’s a wonderful sight. They’re lost in their imagination, making all kinds of noises, faces, and voices. But then tragedy strikes. They accidentally drop their favorite toy on a hard surface, and a piece breaks off. Upon seeing their broken toy, they squeak out, “uh-oh!!” And, of course, they begin to cry.
Now hit the pause button again. What’s happening here? By squeaking “uh-oh!”, what are they saying? And is it any different from when they exclaimed, “yuck!”?
I think they are indeed different. And here’s how.
In the first scenario, the child’s tears are almost exclusively expressing dislike. They are encountering what is for them altogether undesirable, even disgusting. They cry because something is not what they desire.
Now in the second scenario, the child’s tears also express dislike—this is not what they desire either. But there is more: Their tears express discouragement, even despair, for their favorite toy is now irreparably broken.They cry not only because something isn’t what they desired; they cry because something is no longer how it’s designed.
In the first scenario (perhaps depending on a parent’s personality and parenting style), we may or may not sympathize with their tears. Why wouldn’t we? Because, as they get older, we sense ingratitude: They’re being picky.
But in the second scenario (regardless of our personality or parenting style), we should absolutely sympathize with their tears because they’re not being ungrateful. Their tears are not tears of ingratitude.
They are tears of grief.
Further—and this to me is absolutely crucial—even if, at their early stage of development, they cannot discern the difference between the tears at meal time and the tears at play time, there is in fact all the difference in the world between ugly ingratitude and genuine grief, between merely how they want it to be and objectively the way it’s supposed to be.
The former is about personal, private desire. The latter includes desire but is fundamentally about design. The former fails to identify what is good. The latter accurately identifies what is good and is acutely upset by its loss.
While there may well be a stage in our child’s development in which we can sympathize when they exclaim “yuck!” (and possibly hold off for a bit on the kale!), in that moment we still do not dignify their dislike. And as they further develop as humans, at no time should we dignify their disdain for what is good. But we should always want to dignify their discouragement when they discern that things are no longer as designed—whether it’s merely a beloved play time toy that’s now irreparably broken or, far more gravely, a beloved grandparent who has fallen incurably ill.
And here let us turn to an emotion I’ve neglected thus far—namely, gratitude. I take as universal the adage, captured so well by Joni Mitchell, “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.” Indeed, what is grief but gratitude with a rearview mirror and sung in a minor key? Gratitude involves knowing the goods we’ve got before they’re gone.
Thus, we can introduce a third scenario from our parenting, arguably the simplest and most celebrated—namely, when (perhaps over the holidays) we give our child a gift that they’ve been dying to get, and they respond not with a grumbling “yuck!” but with an ever so grateful “yay!”, and they effortlessly and immediately give a big “thank you!” In those situations my wife says, “You’re so welcome. And thank you for saying ‘thank you’!”
Are gratitude, grief, and grumbling universal human experiences? We adults may have far more sophisticated and subtle expressions of “yay!” “yuck!” and “uh-oh!”, but do we not still express them?
Is there a fundamental difference between our grumbling and our grieving? If so, is there truly a dignity that we discern in our grieving, a dignity that directs us to a design and even to something like divinity? Or is such “divine design” merely desire all dressed up?
That is, can we truly grieve without God? If grief is the response to something not being the way it is supposed to be, doesn’t grief itself suggest that our world has a design to it and, therefore, a designer?
And while we’ll set aside for now the possible theological implications of our grumbling, what does our gratitude say? Surely gratitude assumes a gift. But is it possible to have a gift without a Giver? What is to be said for the child who gleefully grabs their new gift and immediately goes off to play? Does this qualify as gratitude?
Or must the child first give thanks to the one who gave it?