Christmas 2023: "...the shadow of the cross is cast by the light of Bethlehem's star."

From the first moment my wife discovered she had breast cancer; the first hints of Dad's Alzheimer's; the first of my own grapples with diabetes...there was an awkward silence from the men I know. Even ones whose wives, mothers or girlfriends had breast cancer, or parent or spouse had Alzheimer's Disease, or who had Type 1 or Type 2 Diabetes themselves...seem disinclined to talk and did little more than mumble about the experience. Not one to shut up for any known reason, I started this blog…

I remember the first holiday during my wife’s recovery – the double mastectomy had been in March; chemotherapy had taken most of the summer. Then the holidays were upon us.

I didn’t write about ANYTHING having to do with them. I certainly don’t remember what we did, but my guess is that family time was curtailed and we likely spent that time at home.

The significant thing was that I DIDN’T WRITE ABOUT IT.

If you take a moment and notice the nearly 500 posts I’ve done since March of 2011, you can imagine the significance of that. I was writing about different kinds of cancers as well as describing the origins and effects of the various drugs she’d endured during chemotherapy.

I was NOT talking about either her feelings or my feelings during the holidays. There are no comments on Thanksgiving or the first day of school or any other significant days during that time. Everything was focused on CANCER. DEFEATING CANCER. My “Christmas Message” in 2012 was “Chemo Killed Colds?” How meaningful.

Maybe I was mad still? My daughter certainly was.

Finally, in 2013, I dealt with it. Below you’ll find the post I managed to write then…

"Random, huh? Whew! Talk about random! Why would thoughts of death intrude on this holy time of year when we celebrate Santa Claus, children, “Ho, ho, ho!”, RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER…

Oh, and the Birth of the Christ Child.

I think about how Target and Walmart and Kay Jewelers and Marshall’s have coopted the season. And Christians fight back with pictures of Santa kneeling at the Manger.

My wife and daughter and I watched one of our season’s favorites the other night, Joyeux Noël (a 2005 French film about the World War I Christmas truce of December 1914, depicted through the eyes of French, Scottish and German soldiers…written and directed by Christian Carion…screened out of competition at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival…nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 78th Academy Awards. The film was one of Ian Richardson's last appearances before his death on 9 February 2007.)

The one Christian Holy Day Wall Street has never been able to coopt is Easter, because Easter is secularly speaking, about a gruesome, governmental execution. For Christians it’s about sacrifice and Resurrection – much like the film, Joyeux Noël.

Much like life in the shadow of death that breast cancer brings to everyone who experiences it, or loves someone who experiences it, or works with those who experience it. Like the inevitable end of virtually every Alzheimer's patient. Even when a diagnosis of diabetes seems to throw a shadow over the future.

This holiday season is somewhat sober for me for many reasons. Yet somehow that has created in me a deeper appreciation for the joy of this same season – a profound thankfulness for many, many things. This thankfulness isn’t like the Christmas play in MERRY CHRISTMAS, CHARLIE BROWN! Rather it’s like the thankfulness of Linus’ recitation of Luke 2: 1-14 – calm, peaceful, fully aware of what he is saying.


An interesting side-story, from Wikipedia: "Christian Carion (who wrote "Joyeux Noel") spent his youth in his parent's farm fields in Northern France, where he was constantly reminded of World War I as the family often found dangerous, unexploded shells left over from the conflicts in the fields. He had also heard of the stories in which French soldiers would leave their trenches at night to meet with their wives in the surrounding German-occupied towns and return to fight the next morning. Carion stated that he'd never heard of the actual Christmas truce incidents while growing up in France, as the French Army and authorities suppressed them, having been viewed as an act of disobedience. He was introduced to the stories via a historian who showed him photos and documents archived in France, Great Britain, and Germany, and became fascinated. He tried to portray all of the soldiers with equal sympathy, as "the people on the frontline can understand each other because they are living the same life and suffering the same way", so he could understand how the truce could have come about. He endeavored to stay true to the real stories, but one of the things he had to change was the fate of the cat that crossed into various trenches. In reality, the cat was accused of spying, arrested by the French Army and then shot by a firing squad, as an actual traitor would have been. The extras in the movie refused to participate in this scene, so it was amended to have the cat imprisoned."]

On that sobering note, and as a reminder of something I discovered a few days ago, "I forget that the shadow of the cross is cast by the light of the star over Bethlehem", I go to ponder this again...


May your Holy Day Season remind you of the same.

Image: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2080/2146696283_afc861ff00_o.jpg