Blue Christmas services help with grieving during holidays

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Congregants heard no triumphant organ fanfares, no joyous Christmas carols, only quiet readings and prayers in a sanctuary lit with votives amid the dusk of late afternoon.

The music was a soft guitar strumming, accompanying a humming solo of the hymn, In the Bleak Midwinter.

The event was a Longest Night service at St. Andrew's Episcopal Church here - one of a growing number of congregations across the country trying to reach those who feel little comfort and joy amid the celebratory season.

"It's a chance to say, 'My life is not totally fabulous,' and to hear God is there," said the Rev. Martha Holland, children's minister at St. Andrew.

Some congregations call it a Blue Christmas service, reflecting the sadness of the song popularized by Elvis Presley. Others call it the Longest Night because it occurs on or near the winter solstice, with the year's least amount of daylight. St. Andrew's service was Wednesday, two days before the solstice.

Some people may be grieving for a loved one with whom they shared Christmases past, Holland said. For others, who may have experienced divorce, abuse or other family trauma, the last thing they want to hear about is coming home for the holidays. Still others simply may be stressed because of holiday expectations.

This year's services are particularly sober amid the fresh grief of the mass murder of children and educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

"As the stress builds on our nation, we need more things like this," worshiper Scott Benson said.

And Indiana churches in Henryville, Otisco, Salem and Jeffersonville - all in or near the path of March 2 tornadoes that killed 35 in Indiana and Kentucky - have had or scheduled services this week that include references to that disaster.

"We knew the holidays were going to be a really difficult time for them," the Rev. Jennifer Mills-Knutsen said. She leads the spiritual and emotional recovery team for March2Recovery, an umbrella group responding to those disasters.

Blue Christmas services have become more and more common in the past two decades with denominations and other groups even adapting traditional December liturgies for the purpose.

At St. Andrew on Wednesday, participants lit four candles on the Advent wreath in honor of grief, pain, fear and struggle, a contrast to their usual representation of love, joy, peace and hope.

Such services help revive the historic meanings of the season of Advent, said the Rev. Chip Hardwick, director of theology, worship and education at the Louisville-based Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

Throughout history, the season, consisting of the four Sundays before Christmas, was a stark, penitential period focused on a longing for the coming of the kingdom of God - something inaugurated by Jesus' birth but that awaits a future fulfillment, Hardwick said.

But a cultural message that "everything is shiny and happy for Christmas" has overwhelmed the season's original meaning, he said.

"I think the shootings have demonstrated in such a public way that that's simply not true," Hardwick said. "Advent is the time when we wait for the world to be what we want it to be."

At St. Andrew, typically 20 to 30 people attend Longest Night services.

Some may need the service in a given year while others come annually with some "ongoing pain," Holland said.

The church began the service after a hit-and-run driver in 2008 killed two children who regularly attended.

"It helps people grieving," St. Andrew member Julianne Kirk said. A stillborn grandchild in 2010 added to her ongoing grief over the two children's deaths.

The service helps "just being closer to God," she said. "We can't know what the reasons are. Things happen. ... It makes you stronger."

The Rev. Ron Knott, director of Catholic worship at Bellarmine University, had a Blue Christmas Mass last Christmas Eve for the first time at Our Lady of the Woods Chapel - and was stunned with the turnout of about 300 people.

"It was overwhelming," he said. "We were not really prepared for what showed up. We were putting up chairs as people were coming in."

The spark for it was a column he had written about holiday grief in the Archdiocese of Louisville's newspaper, The Record. He received so many responses from people telling their own stories of sorrow and tragedy that he decided to schedule the service.

"It's a comfort to a lot of people," he said. For them, "a very upbeat, celebratory Christmas is like salt in the wounds - families with children, everybody's happy."

He plans a service again this Christmas Eve before a more upbeat early Mass.

The Rev. Ben Maas, pastor of St. Andrew, said the goal of the service there was not to provide neat answers for why suffering occurs but to assure parishioners of what is ultimately the message of Christmas:

"The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it, no matter how much it seems like the darkness is winning," he said.

Peter Smith, The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal