I have spent more Christmas Days in the light of a TV screen than enjoying the light of Christ.
As a child, I grew up listening to different voices about the Christmas season.
Some Christians renounced it and refused to recognise it, let alone celebrate it.
“It has roots in paganism, and now it’s all about consumerism,” they’d say snobbishly.
Other Christians adored it, indulged it, and couldn’t be happier in it.
“It’s the best time of the year. It’s my favourite time of the year,” they’d chirp giddily.
As a child, my parents made the most of it for me.
There were presents, stockings, cakes, the church services, and the Christmas program. Even Santa made an occasional appearance.
I cannot remember when it happened. But eventually, as an adult, I stopped enjoying it.
The chill of the winter somehow got into my heart.
The carols felt empty, the events felt superficial, and all the laughter felt hollow.
The Christmas season has an intensifying capacity.
It either heightens your joy or deepens your sorrow.
Whatever you feel, you tend to feel more deeply at Christmas. I usually felt lonely, so it was natural to feel it most at Christmas time.
As a Christian, I found a convenient way to justify this dark feeling by contrasting the present state of the season with “the first Christmas.”
Could the birth of a baby be more despairing than a scandalous pregnancy, a state-sponsored infanticide, and a couple on the run?
But I was struggling to see the most obvious thing: I was feeling lonely.
In present-day India, loneliness is an epidemic.
Friends are not enough to overcome it.
Work is not enough to cope with it.
Pleasure is not enough to silence it.
Money is not enough to endure it.
Marriage is not a cure for it.
Sometimes, if you have all these things, it’s actually harder to recognise that you feel it.
You still feel it.
Loneliness is a window into our unfulfilled longing for intimacy.
If you still feel it, it’s probably a good thing.
It means you still have hope for intimacy.
It’s more concerning if you have found a way to numb the feeling.
You cannot suppress the feeling of loneliness without secretly settling for a life without any real intimacy.
That is when the winter chill in your heart turns into a polar night and an ice age.
All hope is gone.
It was on a lifeless night like that we first heard the promise, “a child is born, a Son is given” (Isa. 9:6).
The birth of Christ is the intersection of two stories: the bitterness of unmet longing, and the one God sent to satisfy it.
It is that pivotal moment when the first rays of light crack open the black veil of darkness.
A lonely world sees light, the weary soul rejoices, and the winter chill begins to break.
This is not to say that faith in Christ equals the end of loneliness.
Our inner ache for intimacy—real, lasting, satisfying, soul-saving intimacy—remains.
But now it has real, tangible, believable hope of satisfaction.
To a great degree in this life, but to its utmost degree when the return of Christ brings us the world of Christ.
So here we live in the space between the now and the not yet—with bearable loneliness, shareable joy, tangible hope, and a genuinely merry Christmas.
In Christ, there is light enough to see, warmth enough to walk, and joy enough to overcome sorrow (2 Cor. 12:9).
