Christmas, Spirituality and Grief

For those who have recently lost someone they love, the Holiday season can seem more as something to survive rather than enjoy. Many bereaved parents feel like they just want to “cancel” Christmas, wishing they could find a quite place to hide until January.

Our society is very much focused on our materialistic possessions and this makes us loose sight of what really matters and lowers the energy frequency of our soul, making our grief even more intense. We have become a culture of excess and overabundance: we move from one new thing to the next one, without taking the time to enjoy it and to be grateful for what we have.

In such a consumerist society we have lost the spiritual meaning of Christmas.

Christmas is not about expensive presents, decorations, meals and posh clothes, but it’s about love, kindness and grace. Christmas is a reminder of the hope that is always being born.

Christmas Day is celebrated by the Christians to commemorate the birth of Jesus and comes right after the longest night of the year on the Winter Solstice – which for centuries and still nowadays signals the return of the light, a day when light reigns over darkness.

Christmas is about the metaphor of God making a miracle to show us how much he loves us. It is about God’s infinite love for every one of us – this is the eternal light that shrines into our spiritual lives at this time of the time year. Whatever our religion, Christmas Day is a reminder that this eternal light is always there for us – it is our choice to embrace it and celebrate it.

For Christians Christmas is about a weak, helpless baby coming into the world in a humble family to walk the Earth reaching out to the lonely, the sick, the poor, the disturbed, trying to teach them how to live in the light of God.

Christmas should be a time of spiritual rebirth – the perfect opportunity to explore our spirituality, to follow the light that illuminates our spiritual path forward: we are called to walk together, not judging one another, and to love our neighbour as ourselves.

Christmas is also a time of gathering with family and friends celebrating the year drawing to a closure, a time for looking back and planning ahead. This is particularly hard for someone missing loved ones who are no longer here to share this special season. The enormous gap left by the death of our children is intensified: Christmas cannot be the same and our family is not complete.

Our pain means that someone worth remembering was there, someone precious and invaluable, who brought joy and love into our lives. Our rawest grief is exposed again, but this is a reflection of our bottomless love. Our love is unbroken by our children’s death. Love transcends death: it is the unbreakable bond that connect us to our children, the unbreakable bond that connect us to God.

The love that we are feeling as we remember our Angels at Christmas and always, that love is our beloved children.

Love never dies.

So instead of being focused on the decoration we will never be able to put up with our children, on the Christmas meal they are missing out, on that toy that they would have liked so much, on that empty chair …….

…….. stop ……..

…….. Take a deep breath, look up and above, search for the light ………

…….. and let the Love fill your soul ………

…….. your Angel child is there with you.

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