Blue Christmas



Walk into any store during this season and the message is clear: it’s the most wonderful time of the year.

Sometimes, however, the message to be of good cheer creates its own pain for those who are struggling. That includes the bereaved, those with mental health challenges and the increasing number of people struggling to make ends meet. It’s also the time of year with the least amount of daylight and long, cold months ahead.

Many churches of a variety of denominations, including Mennonites, respond by holding either a Longest Night service or a Blue Christmas service, typically held on or around the December 21 solstice.

This is also the traditional feast day of the apostle Thomas, offering a connection between Thomas’s struggle to believe in Jesus’ resurrection and the struggle some face with darkness and grief.

The first Blue Christmas service is believed to have been held in B.C. in 1987 as a way to accompany people in their suffering.

Often, candles are used at such services to remind people that, “The light shines on inside of the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it” (John 1:5). Sometimes empty chairs are included as a way of remembering those who have died during the previous year.

There are good years and bad years,
and then there are years from hell.
Hear our prayer, O God, for all who suffer.
You hear the anguished cries,
you collect our tears,
you know when hearts turn to stone.

For the past two years, Eigenheim Mennonite has been part of an ecumenical Longest Night service in Rosthern, Saskatchewan.The first such service in 2022 drew curious participants, including a local funeral director seeking grief resources but also support for his own grief. In 2023, after a local young man died by suicide, most of those in attendance at the Longest Night service were connected to him. The quiet and contemplative service includes a litany using the Advent candles. “We do resolve the minor into amajor key,” says Rachel Wallace, pastor at Eigenheim Mennonite.

“While the first three candles are for those loved and lost, other losses and our feelings at Christmas, the final candle is for the gift of the incarnations.” Each year, Wallace reads from Sara Bessey’s “A Prayer for the Broken-hearted at Christmas.” Last year, she cried as she read it because her own father had died only two months before. While she felt awkward about crying, she adds, “Seeing tears from the person leading is okay.”

This year, the Rosthern churches are asking the local funeral home to invite any families with a loss in the past year to join them.

Send a Saviour now with good news
for those who sit in the shadow of death:
for children who have lost their parents
and have no one to take care of them; 
for all who are fleeing violence
and looking for a place of refuge;
for all who have violated or been violated;
for caregivers who have responsibilities
and nowhere to turn to get help;
for all who have been ravaged by sickness
for who have watched a loved one suffer;
for all who suffer the pain of racism,
or are bowed under the yoke of poverty.
God, you know the particular pain of each one,
and on this longest night, you hold them and us.

The Blue Christmas service held each December at Toronto United Mennonite Church (TUMC) is usually a small and intimate service, but it has been very meaningful to those who attend—and even to some who choose not to attend. Peter Haresnape, a pastor at TUMC, says, “When I contact people who’ve been bereaved during the year, often they say, ‘I won’t come to the service, but thank you very much for doing it and for inviting me.’ It’s an opportunity to remind people there is space for them and their feelings.”

Haresnape adds, “We are definitely doing something very necessary with this. We are perhaps identifying griefs we weren’t aware of previously.” These include griefs about divorce, separa- tion by borders, loss offamily cohesion due to political differences and more.

TUMC uses the same service each year, based on a liturgy written by Carol Penner. The service begins and ends with silence. People can come and go, and can gather after the service to talk if they wish.

Usually, Haresnape says, there are tears. “One critique I’ve heard of this service is that it could reinforce that you’re supposed to be joyful in church at every other service, but [this] intentional space for grief is… a uniformly positive experience and very meaningful.”

On this longest night, in the mystery of your love,
steal into our world again.
Be born again in hearts that long to be reborn,
in communities that have nowhere to go but up.
By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
and you will guide our feet
into the way of peace.
This is our prayer, may it be so.

Since 2019, Waterloo North Mennonite Church in Waterloo, Ontario has offered a Longest Night contemplative service on the winter solstice, “to acknowledge grief of all kinds, [and that] it’s not all tinsel and celebration,” says Waterloo North pastor Carmen Brubacher. “There are deep aches.”

The congregation, including their pastor, is experiencing deep aches this year after the sudden death of Kendra Whitfield Ellis, the other pastor at Waterloo North. They expect more people to attend than usual this year.

Like Eternity Sunday, Brubacher says the Longest Night service allows people to name their sadnesses and to ask for God’s presence and companionship.

While Brubacher is planning the contemplative service, a lay leader will lead it. “I want to provide space for the community, but I need rituals like that, too. My wish is to be able to weep.” Not only does Waterloo North light candles of loss, but they also light candles for wisdom and faith as they put their losses in God’s hands. Brubacher concludes, “There’s peace in this.”  

Poetry by Carol Penner. Used with permission.



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