Christmas is a joyous but also painful time for many. Perhaps on this Christmas Eve you wish you could “hide” Christmas—its ability to bring up every difficult and sad circumstance in your life causes many people to want to get the holidays over with rather than enjoy them.

Christmas is a joyous but also painful time for many.

My nurse just told me that she wasn’t sure if she was going to put up her Christmas tree because it reminded her of her husband who recently died of cancer. Another young woman in our office is grieving her baby boy’s diagnosis of eye tumors. Over the holiday, she will bring him to the hospital for eye surgery and pray for him not to lose his sight.

What is it about Christmas that makes us so sad?

When we see delight around us, we are reminded of what we don’t have. I ache for my mother and father at Christmas. Christmas day was my father’s favorite day of the year, and he spent months thinking of unique gifts for each of us. My mother decorated every nook and cranny of our home. I see the look on their faces when we came…