Yes, it was a worship service, and it was held just a couple weeks before Christmas. But this gathering was not your typical Advent service.
Celebratory carols like “Joy to the World” and “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” were replaced by more reflective songs like “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus” and “Great is Thy Faithfulness.” And the traditional colors of red and green were swapped out for blue—signaling the freedom of participants to express their sadness and confusion to God.
‘Tis the season to be jolly? Not for those who showed up for the second annual “Blue Christmas” service last Sunday evening at Calvary Church in Boalsburg. For those folks, including me and my wife, Kathy, ‘tis the season to mourn a loss while asking God to restore hope. Clearly, we were out of kilter with the culture, and some of us may have even felt out of sorts with our Savior.
“You could get the sense of sadness in the room from the body language,” said Andy Kohlhepp, a State College area resident who lost his wife to cancer in February of 2020. “One girl was sitting in front of me and she had her feet up on the seat, her head between her knees, and she was hugging her knees with her head down.”
Indeed, a somber mood prevailed within the church sanctuary. According to Kohlhepp, “Just calling it ‘Blue Christmas’ and giving us a blue candle told us that we don’t have to be happy and free, but we just have to get through this. Really, it was a cool experience of comfort, connecting with others and the message of Jesus and his death and resurrection.”
Somewhat more than 100 folks gathered for the service, all feeling a void for varying reasons—loss of a loved one, loss of a relationship, loss of a job or loss of a dream. And it took an unconventional perspective from church leaders to allow such an event to be held.
“The idea that Christmas kind of takes away the pain of the world isn’t true,” said Pastor Dan Nold. “There’s a lot of people going through stuff every Christmas, and I think we acknowledge that at Calvary. There’s hope, but in the midst of the hope you have to acknowledge the hurt.”
GRIEVING A DAD’S DEATH
One of those who shared a story of grief on Sunday night was Lynn Nold, wife of Dan. Her words helped provide a foundation of transparency and faith for the entire service.
“I lost my dad seven months ago…” she said, “and this will be my first Christmas without him. I have a deep peace knowing that this is going to be the best Christmas my dad has ever experienced. I have no doubt that when he died and saw Jesus, he heard the words, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.’
“Yet, in spite of what a good and godly human he was, he went through horrible suffering the last year of his life. Watching him suffer was one of the hardest things I’ve ever gone through. And the last hour of his life was even more difficult to watch… I found myself trying to bargain with God and then getting angry because he was not answering the way I thought he should. I wasn’t even praying towards the end that God would heal him; I was just praying that he would no longer be suffering.
“I needed to learn to trust that God is still good even when he doesn’t answer the way I think he should. We suffer and God is good. Life is hard and God is good. When my dad died, I was really angry…but the beautiful part was that I felt this invitation from God and he met me in my anger. I would go out onto my porch every morning, and he would meet me in my anger. I had this unconscious view that God’s love was transactional, but God used this process to unravel that lie. So I could live in the truth that God’s love is unconditional, God’s love is perfect, God’s love is kind.
“A Scripture passage, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, says that ‘Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.’”
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As I sat there beside my wife, Kathy, I felt a kinship to those around me. Like them, I had experienced suffering during “the most wonderful time of the year.” And even though my experiences of holiday heartbreak took place long ago, I remember them clearly. (In fact, I wrote a lengthy column about these deaths in 2016.)
My dad, Marty Horlacher, passed away from a heart attack on Dec. 23, 1978. My mom, Mary Lou Horlacher, lost her life to the aging process on Dec. 27, 2010. Yes, with one parent departing just two days before Christmas and the other dying two days after Christmas, my brother Bob and I are more acquainted with yuletide loss than most people.
So what do I still remember from these experiences? Although my father’s death happened much longer ago, the shock of losing a 60-year-old father left impressions that remain even more vivid than those from the death of an 89-year old mother.
Most of all, I can vividly picture myself at Dad’s funeral on Dec. 26 of ’78, standing alongside others as we sang “Amazing Grace.” And that’s when I felt it: an emotion that has no name. Actually it was the combination of two emotions—grief and joy—that were simultaneously intertwined in my heart. As weird as that felt, it made sense to me as I grieved the fact that I would never see my father again on earth but also realized that his faith in Jesus had secured him a place in heaven. My experience wasn’t altogether blue. Maybe it was purple, I don’t know. But I could surely relate to those sitting around me at Calvary Church’s “Blue Christmas” gathering.
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OFFERING WISDOM TO OTHERS
Scott Leddy, one of the church’s associate pastors, shared his own experience and then offered teaching from Scripture (Psalm 13) at this special service. First, he described the dramatic downhill experience of his mother that began with Parkinson’s disease. Although her case of Parkinson’s was manageable at first, things changed when she was taking a walk and was hit by a car. Injuries from that accident amplified the effects of her Parkinson’s and her dementia, and the result was a mental decline that Leddy sadly described as “breathtakingly difficult to watch.”
The Calvary leader next told his listeners how such trials lead to spiritual struggles. “We find ourselves asking how a perfectly-loving, all-powerful God can allow something like this to take place,” he said. “Maybe we have this feeling that God can’t be trusted and maybe we even feel that he’s turned his back on us or that he’s just not that interested in our lives.
“I just want to say that isn’t true. I can tell you with full confidence that the presence of grief in our lives does not mean the absence of Jesus. Your loss doesn’t mean you’ve upset God or that he doesn’t really care. He’s not now and he will never be an absentee father. He has not left you alone in your grief. The Christmas story of the incarnation of Jesus has always been this picture of a God who chooses to step directly into the darkness of our lives.”
The Calvary leader offered three closing suggestions: “Bring your questions to your Heavenly Father; don’t keep them to yourself…Don’t choose isolation; we need each other…Stay open to being sent; Jesus may want to use you in the midst of brokenness and grief to speak truth to somebody else.”
REASONS FOR HOPE
Kohlhepp, himself a licensed professional counselor, noted several reasons for hope during the service. First, as someone who attended last year’s gathering, he noticed an easing of his own grief during the last 12 months. “Last year,” he said, “I went and there were tears going down my cheeks the whole time. So this year, I didn’t cry. I felt sad, but I didn’t cry.”
“And then,” added Kohlhepp, “it was good just that we had the service and said, ‘Hey, we know this sucks, but come on in.’ The point is that we go on with hope, and what we do with this loss is our ability to put one foot in front of the other and to take our experience to help others who have just had someone die or gone through another loss.”
Other Centre County churches are also hosting Blue Christmas services this season, including St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in State College (7 p.m., Dec. 18), St. Mark Lutheran Church of Snydertown (7 p.m., Dec. 19) and Halfmoon Christian Fellowship Church in Stormstown (7 p.m., Dec. 22).
