The Empty Chair at Christmas
Why loss is so hard when the holidays come and how the incarnation give us hope
The older you get, the more the losses pile up. Some experience this more than others. For me, it’s a beloved uncle who always dressed up like Santa and opened his home in Wisconsin to our family. Driving there was like driving through a winter wonderland. One year, we got out the sleds and went riding down the big hill. Uncle Brian was a pediatrician, a lover of people, and obscure medical research, which he would send to family whether we wanted to read it or not. He loved sports, especially football. Especially the Green Bay Packers. I forgave him for that because he was so kind. He made Christmas fun. He died in 2018. I was sitting on my back porch in Tennessee when my sister called and told me. I couldn’t believe it. A car struck him while he was riding his bike, running an errand. At his visitation, the line to pay respects was out the door and down the street. I talked to one female college basketball player who was weeping because, when she was little, Uncle Brian would not rest until he found exactly what was wrong with her. He saved her life and countless others. Late in life, his lament was that economics forced him to see more patients and spend less time with each. His chair has been empty every year since he passed.
We lost my mother a couple of years ago, and while we haven’t moved on, we have moved forward. But at Christmas, we remember her. We especially remember her exquisitely wrapped presents under the tree. We think about her recipes—corn soufflé, pink “elephant jello,” and a few others. I think of the way she called every day, sometimes when I was in a meeting and couldn’t pick up. We talked about some news story. “What do you think?” she’d ask. My mom loved her grandkids. She FaceTimed my daughter, and we would laugh because most of the time we’d only see 3/4 of her face. Technology wasn’t her thing. Mom was so encouraging to me. She’d over and over again tell me how proud she was of my work, my family, my life. In her later years, she’d comment on my Facebook posts like you’d imagine a proud mother would. We didn’t get home to Chicago every Christmas, but we still feel a tremendous loss with her gone.
We’ve lost others. My uncle Jim, a faithful churchman and USPS mailman for over 40 years. He was a photographer who, for free, did our wedding pictures.
I’m sure you are reading this and lamenting some losses in your family. Christmas—full of sweet tidings and sweet sentiments—can be hard. I’m thinking as I write of a family in our church who lost their son in a tragic accident this year. He was a senior, about to graduate. My son’s age. I can’t even imagine their grief. Yet I see them show up, week after week, in our small group. I see them find ways to pick up their life and keep going. I think of my late mother-in-law who had to raise her children by herself, endured tremendous hardships, and yet hung on to her fragile faith.
Are you struggling with a loss this season? An unexpected relationship severed? A broken family? A marriage in tatters? A death you didn’t expect. The truth is that you can bring your losses to Christmas because God feels them. Jesus was born into a world every bit as broken as ours, to a family with little agency and few resources. In a culture of fear where the king slaughtered young baby boys out of jealousy. To fulfill a mission that saw him betrayed, beaten, falsely accused, and unjustly executed. The God who made this world, who crafted you with care and precision, understands what it is to suffer the death of a loved one. He saw his own son brutally murdered at the hands of the very people he created.
In the Christmas story are the rays of hope we need to help us endure our losses. Jesus doesn’t merely sympathize with our pain; his life, death, and resurrection mean the eventual end of our pain. I love this lyric from Charles Wesley’s wonderful Christmas hymn:
Hail the heaven-born Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
risen with healing in his wings.
Mild he lays his glory by,
born that we no more may die,
born to raise us from the earth,
born to give us second birth.
This is not the trite “season’s greetings” or the milquetoast “just believe” mantra from so many of our beloved Christmas movies. This is real. This is why to celebrate Jesus’ birth in the midst of loss is a sort of rebellion against the darkness of this world. It is to say with John, “Light has come into the world and the darkness has not overcome it (John 1:5).”
Death and loss are grievous. They are the work of the enemy. There is no sugarcoating their pain. Yet we can face the empty chairs around the table this year because there is an empty tomb in the Middle East where Jesus once lay. He has conquered sin, death, and the grave. He has reversed the curse. He is making all things new. And one day, he is coming to full restore all things. Listen to this promise:
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away (Revelation 21:4)."