Advent: Blue Christmas

Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

Kate Bowler

Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 5.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 December 2025

⏱️ 6 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Every grocery store speaker is now officially blasting “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year.” And let’s be honest: sometimes it feels like a demand. The happiest Christmas music can feel like salt in the wound when life is heavy. If this season is not “merry and bright” for you, you’re not alone. That’s why many churches will hold “Blue Christmas” services next week. It’s an American tradition that says out loud what so many feel quietly: the holidays can hurt. These services dim the lights, play gentler music, light blue candles, and make space for grief. They remind us that the story of Christmas itself is no stranger to darkness—Jesus was born into a world of oppression and fear. Joy didn’t arrive because the world was perfect; it arrived anyway. I thought perhaps now, only halfway through the Advent season, it might be a good time to take a peek at the customs and traditions and plans that you’ve got on the calendar and see if you need to make any room for grief. Maybe the invitation of Advent is not to blast the cheeriest carol until we believe it, but to prepare room for joy by telling the truth. By letting sorrow breathe. By choosing practices that gently turn our hearts back toward joy without pretending the sadness is gone. What might that look like for you? A quiet walk near some city Christmas lights. A playlist that mixes Bing Crosby with a hymn that actually makes you cry. A phone call to the person who understands the empty chair at your table. Joy doesn’t demand we silence our grief. It asks us to make just enough room for God to slip in beside it. And sometimes, that tiny crack of space is all joy needs to return. Subscribe to Kate’s Substack for blessings, essays, and reflections that hold what’s hard and beautiful. Join us for Advent over there, too! See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you by Lilly Endowment as part of our series on Christian spirituality.
0:04.8	This is a series that reflects on life and faith in the service of knowing and loving God.
0:13.8	All right. So, hey, how's everyone holding up? Now that the Christmas season is in full swing,
0:19.6	every surface is twinkling, every store is
0:22.4	repeating jingle bell rock in a way that makes you homicidal. Every advertisement is just saying
0:29.0	this is the happiest time of the year. And maybe it is for some, but for a lot of us, I think it's complicated.
0:40.3	Because joy can feel hard to reach when life is so heavy when someone is missing,
0:48.3	when the world feels fragile, when joy seems to belong to other people.
0:55.4	Other people who don't read the news and live in a beautiful and well-decorated cave.
1:02.3	So if you're feeling like one of those people who isn't naturally joyful, maybe this week's
1:10.1	Advent theme, joy might feel like a cruel joke, but I promise
1:14.4	it isn't. I just think it's like a good time to give it a thought. So Joy's elusive character is often
1:25.5	why a lot of churches around this time of year hold what's called a
1:28.2	blue Christmas tradition. My dad is an expert on Christmas and he's been studying this for a long
1:34.5	time. But it's this lovely, particularly North American tradition that says out loud what so
1:40.0	many people feel quietly, which is that the holidays can be very painful.
1:45.9	At these services where the lights are dimmed and the music slows down and the candles
1:49.8	flicker, people often will then tell the truth.
1:56.1	They will whisper their prayers of weariness and grief. They will give up on the fake it till you make it
2:05.1	merry and bright. And I think part of what's important about keeping that inside of our
2:14.6	tradition is that it really reminds us that the story of Christmas is no stranger to the darkness. Jesus was born into a world of oppression and fear. Joy didn't
2:25.0	arrive because the world was perfect. It arrived anyway. And maybe that's what Advent joy really is. It's not that forced accumulated happiness,
	...

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