Ways to Remember Your Loved One This Christmas Season

Intro

A modern Christmas is a season filled with traditions, gifts, surprises, and busyness for many people. It's a time filled with light cheer and fun in popular culture. It’s also a beautiful time of deep reflection and happiness for many Christians. However, it can also be a sad time if you’ve experienced the recent death of a family member, friend, or someone else you knew personally. 

Traditions can often be sad when they bring back memories of the way things used to be. Whether this is your first Christmas season without someone you love or it’s been many years, it’s completely normal to be affected by grief as Christmas brings you memories. However, if you feel a burst of happiness this Christmas, enjoy it. There’s no requirement that you must grieve at any particular time and there’s no law against feeling grief more heavily right now. 

Christmas is a time for joy, but this does not mean happiness is a requirement for this time of year. In fact, happiness and joy are not even the same. Happiness is a feeling. Joy is a choice. One of my favorite pastors/authors, Chip Ingram, in his book The A.R.T. of Survival in an Age of Chaos, says that this joy is possible because it does not depend on your circumstances. Joy is an attitude you can choose daily. (See endnote 1 for source info) You can trust that God has specific gifts to bless you with in the present. He understands your hurt deeply and will help you in your grief if you ask Him. 

In the middle of celebrations, you can choose to focus on the dark world around you and any sorrow in your heart or you can bring your sorrow to the God who entered into our human suffering a little over 2,000 years ago. After all, Jesus left Heaven and chose to be born so that He could bring the presence of God to everyone who chose Him then and everyone who continues to choose Him today. The fact that God chose to experience our suffering and save us even though we didn’t deserve it is why songwriters continue to command that ‘heaven and nature sing’ (a lyric in ‘Joy to the World’ by Isaac Watts, a popular American Christmas hymn) in celebration through natural disasters, injustice, and grief. 

God had good things in store for those living at the time of Jesus’s birth and still has good things in store for you today. Let Him show you what good He has for you today by choosing to be present in it. In the parts that feel hard or even unbearable, know that God does and will continue to hold you through the challenges, brokenness, suffering, and pain if you do not turn away from Him - and is always ready to accept and forgive you again if you did - because on the Cross He officially took away evil’s power to ultimately destroy anyone who accepts His salvation. (Editor’s Note: Please see our Statement of Faith for more details about salvation.)

I hope some of the thoughts in this article help you find ways to meaningfully approach this year’s Christmas season, keeping your loved ones’ memory in your heart.

Consider Attending an Empty Chair Service

If you are in a non-denominational or pentecostal Protestant faith tradition, some churches near you may offer an Empty Chair Service. This service is a way to acknowledge your grief in the middle of festivities and celebrations. Every church does their services a little differently, but most of them do one in early December. You can also find many recordings online if you cannot attend in-person.

At the service my family went to, everyone sang a few Christmas carols, a pastor preached about grief during the Christmas season (and how Jesus’s birth brings hope into grief), there was a candle-lighting time where the pastor talked about 4 things light symbolized in grief, and prayer team were available after the service to pray for anyone with grief-related prayer needs.

Going to a church service about grief can be a beautiful way to remind yourself that you are not alone. Christmas is a time to celebrate, but celebration does not require perfect happiness. Many people are experiencing fresh waves of grief during the Christmas season, whether it is their first Christmas separated from someone they love or it has been many. 

You can go to an Empty Chair Service no matter how many years it has been. God knows that grief is a journey. An Empty Chair service can also remind you that you are not alone at all in grieving. Jesus knows what it is to grieve too.

Enjoy Old Traditions - But Expect to Feel a Mixture of Happiness and Sadness

Old traditions feel most special when you have memories related to them. As you cherish your memories and miss the time you shared with your loved one, you don’t have to put away the joy of a thing you two enjoyed together by not doing it this year. There’s something truly powerful about continuing a tradition as a way to honor the other person’s memory. 

You probably will think about them while doing it and grieve the changes that have taken place. This is normal and I’d encourage you to not be afraid to think about the pain in this new experience. However, seeing the change in an old tradition might be a reminder that every moment you’re living now will be a memory later. You have a truly beautiful opportunity to continue to see Christmas as a meaningful time of year and merge your past experiences with present ones.

You can use a tradition as a way to remember the loved one who has died and deeply cherish every moment you have with the ones currently around you. That being said, it is also completely fine to decide (with a little prayer) to take a break from or discontinue a tradition that you think might bring you more pain than joy. 

Consider Giving Gifts that Help Other People who are Grieving Remember

Often, the Christmas season is very focused on gift-giving. I think this comes from the fact that ‘We give because God gave Jesus to us’ (endnote 2), as a profound church kids lesson I got to listen to once emphasized. Sometimes material objects can be significant in helping someone cherish their loved ones’ memory. You could make or buy gifts that remind people in your life of the loved one they are grieving this Christmas. 

Someone in my immediate family did this for the first Christmas without my dad. My dad loved sailboats. Several family members had memories doing water-related activities with him, so this member of my family handmade miniature sailboat ornaments using my dad’s favorite color. This was an inexpensive and thoughtful way for many of us to cherish his memory.

When I make gifts, I also enjoy the time to reflect on what I am making and who I am making it for. You could handmake a gift and think about memories you have with your loved one as you create it.

You could also buy a gift for another person too. For example, any time my immediate family members see specific designs certain family members who have died liked, we typically consider the item for a Christmas gift (Poinsettias to remember one of my grandmothers, lighthouses or sailboats to remember my dad, etc.). 

Christmas is a great time to focus on helping others. When you feel like you have little or nothing to give, remember that the light of Christ shines through you if you have accepted His salvation and received the Holy Spirit (Editors’ Note: See our Statement of Faith for further explanation on what we mean by ‘salvation’ and ‘Holy Spirit’). You can trust God to be strong in your weakness. He will help you identify and take advantage of opportunities to be generous this Christmas season in every way.

When Getting Together with Other Loved Ones, Consider Sharing Memories

Often, Christmas is a beautiful time to reminisce about the past as one year closes and the new one is coming up. As we look at old decorations and experience traditions again, you may be reminded of seasonal memories with a loved one who has died as well as other memories. The Christmas season could be a beautiful opportunity to share these memories and reflections with those you love.

Gathering with people who are grieving the same person’s absence that you are will be painful and may have some awkward moments. However, some of you may really benefit from the chance to remember the person you are all missing together. Even though there will be sadness in the memories because your time with your loved one has ended for now, sharing memories could be a truly meaningful way to enjoy all the things you loved about your loved one, laugh together about fun times you had together, learn more from others about your loved one’s life or personality, and discover the traits about your loved one that you may want to emulate in your own life. (Editor’s note: See ‘Learning From Your Loved Ones’ for more insights from Macy about how memories about your loved one can lead to personal and spiritual growth.)

In my experience, this memory-sharing works best if it is a small group of people who all had similar levels of closeness with the person who died and are all willing to talk about memories. It’s also been generally spontaneous for me, but does not have to be. 

I remember several cozy evenings when I got to hear stories about my dad. I enjoyed getting to learn about what he was like from people who knew him well in childhood, teenage years, and life as a young adult.

Stories can also strengthen a community because they are powerful ways to acknowledge what you are all grieving. They can also help remind you what that person valued and worked toward. You can choose to keep any of their others-serving aims in mind as your community approaches the future. Hearing about other people’s core values can help you discover yours. On a lighter note, it’s fun to laugh about something together with a group of people, especially if you’ve had trouble finding joy together recently.

Conclusion

This Christmas/Advent season, I hope you can feel the joy that the birth of a Savior brought to the entire world. Grief is hard and celebration in grief feels strange. However, I hope these ideas help you approach the changes in meaningful ways and choose to look for joy when times feel dark and difficult. Christ’s world was dark too. For thousands of years, people waited for God to move. Now, He has, and because He has, we can remember our loved ones in meaningful ways with the confident hope that God is actively with us in our grief and (if your loved one accepted salvation) they are in God’s Presence, joyfully celebrating His birth with a bigger Christmas party than we can possibly imagine!

Endnotes:

Endnote 1: Ingram, Chip, The A.R.T. of Survival in an Age of Chaos (2022, Living on the Edge, Suwanne, Georgia), Ch. 1: An Attitude to Embrace

Endnote 2: Christmas preschool lesson video with Starr and Emily, River Valley Church, December 2017