Fearful at Christmas...

Christmas, a holiday that happens at the final month of the year, December, is supposed to be a happy time...So why do people feel so scared right now?

      In ordinary times, Christmas is supposed to be those most joyful and most wonderful time of the year; but these are not normal times. Today, we are living in a time of great fear, of great anxiety. But at the same time, we are also living in a time of hope, a hope that one day, this whole entire nightmare of a pandemic would be far behind us, and that we would finally have some sort of normalcy, if there happened to be any kind of normalcy left…
      At the very same time that we are facing this kind of hardship, we ask ourselves if we could ever get over all of the grief that we have endured this year because of all the deaths, cancellations, restrictions that we have been forced to comply with. Well, let me tell you something: Grief is not something to get over with: Grief takes forever to get over, and that happens to be a mighty long time. You try your very darndest to focus on the important stuff that you should be doing while you are still in a state of grief. If you do well, that is good, and then you keep on trying. In fact, if we keep on trying to keep going in such a crisis as this, then we would make it though this and come out stronger. We have never had such a time like this before, and I do not have any idea if we would ever have something like this ever again.
      And Christmas right now is going to be such a hard a time as ever for the many who have lost their jobs and cannot afford to make ends meet, both for themselves and for their children, and they just cannot afford any Christmas presents for them, either. If Congress does not get its act together and come up with a stimulus to help desperate people in America like you and me, then we are in deep trouble, along with the fact that the economy will collapse. And I, as well as the rest of America, are very scared right now, even though we must be brave in navigating this pandemic together.

     All I can ever do at this point is to pray and pray very hard for things to get a whole lot better, and even when times seem to be at their worst, I still pray on and on. Yes, there is a reason to pray, even at Christmas.
      You see, Christmas is not about greed or selfishness; it is about joy, caring, love, peace, unity, and harmony; it is about a beautiful gift of love that was given to us over 2,000 years ago when our Heavenly Father showed His love for every one of us by choosing a woman, a virgin, named Mary, to give birth to the greatest Savior that there ever was-a Savior who has taken our place on the cross to die for us, and was risen again. A Savior who was born in a manger in Bethlehem to save the world. A Savior who would go on to become the reason why we still have Christmas. If it wasn’t for the One who has shown us peace and love in this world that we are more lost than anything on earth.
      Christmas is a time for peace and love, so let us work at trying to make this kind of peace, in spite of what we have endured this year; let us work to make this Christmas as best as we can, as spiritual as we can, and as very full of pure love as we can. Let us all pray for a very brighter and very peaceful future, one that is filled with unity, hope, and love this Christmas, and all through the year. A very merry & blessed Christmas to one and all.
           ©2020 Jenn Webster 

Author's Note

This is a very special piece for Christmas for Writer's Cafe; please tell me what you think of it. If there are any problems, please let me know, and thanks so very much!-JW