Bringing Home

There are many reasons for grieving, not all of them related to physical death. Some grieve the death of hopes and plans, as the years of singleness, childlessness, or chronic illness accumulate. Others grieve the families they once had, now divided by divorce. Still others miss the ease of family celebrations before this new, blended family arrangement hit them.

Christmas often staggers under the weight of human emotion and expectation — just as it has from the very start.

From a human perspective, the first "Christmas," so to speak, was simultaneously crowded and lonely. Dispirited Jews shuffled around the region, required to be part of a new, universal Roman census for possibly the first time. (Previously Palestine had been excluded from the Roman census because Jews were exempt from serving in the Roman army.) Among those sojourners was a young couple with a whiff of scandal about them. {more...}

[via Boundless, HT: Solo Femininity]