By Jeff Brumley
Christmas is typically depicted as a time of happiness and family togetherness. And for many people, that certainly is the case.
But for many others, it isn’t. For them a recent death, divorce or job loss has made it a season of stress, loneliness and grief.
“It brings up very deep emotions of love and regret and pain,” said Barrett Owen, pastor of National Heights Baptist Church in Atlanta.
It’s why National Heights and many other Baptist churches have embraced the practice of holding remembrance services each December.
Sometimes known as “Blue Christmas” services, they are often reflective gatherings designed to comfort those for whom this is not “the most wonderful time of the year.”
“The service acknowledges the pain many of us carry during this season that’s supposed to be happy and joyful,” said Michael Cheuk, senior minister at University Baptist Church in Charlottesville, Va.
‘We want answers’
University Baptist, which began hosting the services in 2012, held this year’s event on Dec. 3. Cheuk said they have the feel of a memorial service thanks to Scripture selections from Ecclesiastes, the Psalms and the New Testament.
“For some, it’s the very first holiday season they will spend without a loved one,” he said.
So, participants remember all of those who have died in the preceding 12 months.
The service also includes a moment of reflection and music. Remembrance isn’t aimed solely at those who have suffered the death of a loved one, but all of those struggling with difficult questions.
“In times like these we want answers from the University of Virginia on how to deal with sexual assault,” Cheuk said, referencing the recent controversy on the nearby campus over alleged fraternity sexual assaults. “We want answers from doctors and from God.”
The services also remind participants that the answers they seek may lie in the theology of the holiday season.
“We acknowledge that in the season of Advent, we are waiting for a savior to make whole the broken pieces of our heart,” Cheuk said.
That’s also where the answers to those painful questions can be found, he said.
“What God has given us is Jesus, and maybe instead of a verbal answer, God gives us God’s presence,” he said. “So God lives and walks alongside us.”
Not faking it
The services also function like an Ash Wednesday service, Owen said.
“The whole service is intentionally a reflective service about your life in relation to God,” said Owen, whose congregation has been holding a “Blue Christmas” service for four years.
Owen said he first experienced a holiday remembrance event at First Baptist Church in Decatur, Ga., during his years at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology.
He recalled it feeling like a memorial service in a lot of ways, but also a chance to communally admit the experience of ongoing pain.
Still inspired, Owen penned a Perspectives piece for Baptist News Global this week. In it, he noted that the tension between life and death isn’t something to be shunned, but something to be embraced.
“None of us … have enough holiday cheer to mask life’s pain,” Owen wrote in the Dec. 9 article.
“So instead of faking it, we’re taking time to name and offer our pain to God.”
In an interview, Owen said the service usually generates feelings in participants that he hears about afterward.
“I get a lot of pastoral care moments out of that,” he said.
But participants also report finding immense healing and comfort from the mutual support found in the service.
Of course, that element has made some Baptists uncomfortable, Owen added.
“It’s forcing us to be reflective practitioners, and the service itself is not patterned on the typical four-walls-and-a-sermon model,” he said.
And there is another element that makes some evangelicals uncomfortable.
“There are candles,” Owen said. “And there is movement — people come down and light a candle at the altar and we speak words of loss and the names of the deceased.”
‘Reclaiming … traditions’
That kind of service certainly wasn’t anything Brent Beasley ever saw growing up Baptist in Texas.
“There were no candles” there, said Beasley.
But there are at Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas, where Beasley is the senior pastor.
And there has been for a while — Broadway’s “Service of Comfort and Healing” stretches back 25 years and will be held again Dec. 14.
The church holds the service because it’s the right thing to do, Beasley said.
“It’s no secret that this is the time of year when people get depressed about loss in their family and with all the emphasis on getting together with family and family memories,” he said.
“This is our attempt to give people an outlet and to remind people it’s OK to feel sadness and grief — and that they are not alone in that.”
At Broadway, the service is held in the sanctuary on a Sunday afternoon. A musician will play a hymn or two, followed by a short homily.
Then participants are invited to the front of the sanctuary to light a candle and share who the candle is for, Beasley said.
“That’s the most meaningful moment,” he said, adding that some also share memories of those who have passed.
“It gives people something tangible to do, and that helps,” he said.
Beasley acknowledged that such practices may be uncomfortable for some. But it’s also clear a lot of Baptists are adopting the idea.
“That’s the whole phenomenon,” he said. “A lot of our churches are reclaiming those older traditions and the liturgical traditions.”
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A Blue Christmas Service to grieve together | By Barrett Owen