As I glance around at Christmas lights and decorated trees; listen to Christmas music; bake cookies to give away; and write my cards, it is possible to still feel joyful during this, the un-Christmas Christmas season.
I'm calling it that for all of the things it isn't. There will be no grandchildren in our home this year. We won't be hosting friends and neighbours for appetizers or brunches. Our town did host a Santa Claus Parade yesterday (thankfully, for the kids) but it was a reverse one; the floats remained stationary and families drove slowly by them. I continue to be amazed by the ingenuity COVID has unleashed, but, still, another example of how different this Christmas is.
While my Christmas joy is present despite our situation this year, my mind has been working to differentiate the joy we associate with this season from true joy.
I think the joy we experience at Christmas encompasses much. It's the pleasure of doing for others while surrounded by colourful lights and music we've known forever. The small traditions that we carry on year after year bring joy (although a little bedraggled, Santa has been with us for forty plus years and is brought out happily each year).
The happiness we see on faces around us lightens our hearts and brings a smile to our own. Christmas joy can be spread. I would describe it more as 'feeling' than 'experience': a softening of the hard edges of our usual days.
For me, the experience of true joy is indescribable. It has washed over me at unexpected moments, filling my body and mind with an undefinable radiance, leaving before I fully grasp that it happened. It's ethereal; indistinct and yet the memory of its beauty undeniable. These joyful experiences may have been fleeting and rare but will nonetheless remain with me throughout my life.
To say they happened during a moment is inaccurate. A moment denotes a specific time that is identifiable. I remember the experience of true joy but not the date or time it came over me.
Unlike our Christmas joy, C.S. Lewis wrote that we cannot create (true) joy. It just happens. He describes it in his book "Surprised by Joy":
"Everywhere he looked for Joy he couldn’t find it, though at times when he wasn’t looking for it, Joy would make an appearance and then vanish."
Is this type of joy a message from beyond or an opening within ourselves?
It doesn't matter that words don't exist to help me define true joy. The experience of it has given me a glimpse of what I know I will never understand but which tells me I'm a part of something much larger and greater than my everyday.
Even the everyday of un-Christmas.
Especially the everyday of un-Christmas.
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