I do not want to be the Grinch tsk-tsking anyone for decorating the tree early or firing up “Jingle Bell Rock” before the 25th. I’m all for happiness, joy, eggnog, corny sweaters and parties, but to rush into Christmas without first taking time to collectively acknowledge the sorrow in the world and in our own lives seems like an inebriated and overstuffed practice of denial.

The church, after all, reserves 12 whole days for feasting and festivity during Christmas . Both darkness and light are real, and our calendar gives time to recall both. But in the end, Christians believe the light is more real and more enduring. There is still good news to celebrate , even when — perhaps especially when — it’s been a hard year.

The arrival of Christmas Day is not the culmination of the holiday season, but merely the starting pistol for almost two weeks of good food and drink, parties and community gatherings, lights and gifts, service and time together. Times of worship become jubilant and joyful: White replaces purple, babies are finally placed in mangers, and Christmas carols fill the air.

My church community tries to keep the party going for 12 whole days, which can be a little hard when everyone else’s tree is on the curb and school is starting up again, but we try nonetheless. Christians are called to take up celebration as intentionally as they take up waiting.

We need communal rhythms that make deliberate space for both grief and joy. For me, the old saying rings true: Hunger is the best condiment. Abstaining, for a moment, from the clamor of compulsive jollification, and instead leaning into the reality of human tragedy and of my own need and brokenness, allows my experience of glory at Christmastime to feel not only more emotionally sustainable but also more vivid, vital and cherished.

Our response to the wrongness of the world (and of ourselves) can often be an unhealthy escapism, and we can turn to the holidays as anesthesia from pain as much as anything else. We need collective space, as a society, to grieve — to look long and hard at what is cracked and fractured in our world and in our lives. Only then can celebration become deep, rich and resonant, not as a saccharine act of delusion but as a defiant act of hope.

Tish Harrison Warren (@Tish_H_Warren) is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America, writer in residence at the Church of the Ascension in Pittsburgh and author of “Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life.”

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