Christmas in an Empty Nest

The first of a mere handful, we hope. 

We knew this Christmas was coming, the one in which both of our adult children would be elsewhere with their significant others and their families. We did raise them to have lives of their own, after all. In Christmas 2019, for the first time since 1992, it will be just the wife and me sitting around the tree. 

We knew this was coming and we knew we’d have to adjust, but still. Watching my wife try to pick up her spirits watching the Christmas-themed rom-coms on the Hallmark channel, her normal drive to do all the things at once depressed as the rest of us, I caught myself uttering blasphemy.

“Well, let’s just get through these holidays and get on with our lives.”

When the little ones in the photos get big and get careers and cars and build out on their own as they should...I keep telling myself I should rejoice that they’re not asocial losers I have to chase from the house. I keep telling myself....

I like to think I’m better than that but I let the usual suspects get to me. The money is tight. (When is it not?) We still have so many things around the house that need fixing. My third book will not be finished in this calendar year and I don’t have a clue when I’ll be able to bring it to the world.

Christmas has a tendency to show us where the holes are in our lives, which is why so many people have a hard time with it. It’s a season of high spirits, and for some those spirits will never leave a tight fetal position in bed, let alone fly. It doesn’t help that we place so many expectations on this one day—two days, if you count Christmas Eve, and we probably should. No one wants to be alone on Christmas Eve. 

My wife and I are happy to have each other, but it is our children who have given the most meaning to our relationship and to our lives. You either understand that or you don’t; it’s not something that can be explained to anyone who hasn’t nurtured a child to adulthood. “Ha! Children! I’m a smart person on the go who doesn’t need [disgusting epithet for children] for validation! I feel sorry for you!” I’d pity these creatures right back had they hearts and souls to regard in any way. 

Our tree, like all the best family trees, is a virtual museum of the years.

There will be melancholy, but we will learn to laugh at it. Our melancholy is a consequence of our success as parents, for which we should rejoice—and we do rejoice, however qualified that rejoicing. Our children have jobs, cars, lives when all we did was feed them, dress them, coach them, love them. If we tell them our hopes that they have children of their own some day, it’s not out of selfish desire for grandchildren. It’s so our children will know the happiness we have known throughout the many Christmases we’ve gathered about the tree, from infants to toddlers to small children looking forward to Santa, from teens to young adults to serious grownup here for the party.

I laugh now at how hard it was for me to let go of my children’s childhoods as they entered middle school, and that after all these years I’m finally over that loss. I understand I have been privileged to see my children’s arcs rise into mature adulthood. I can only pray I will be here to see as much more (God willing, not all of it) as I can before my time comes.

My wife and I will enjoy our time together. We’ll take a walk if it isn’t too savagely cold. Maybe watch a movie together, then drive around and look at the lights.

It will be a Christmas for two, a quiet, sober time. No loud talking over the music or the video games. Just an old couple and their cats missing their grown children, praying they’re happy and having a good time with good people.

There is no getting around the fact that Christmas is a tough time of year for a lot of us. No platitudes, certainly no imprecations to “cheer up!” are going to help. I can only wish for those suffering in this season that they find the love they’re missing in the coming year, that they don’t allow the happiness of others to embitter them.

For those of us who strive to keep Christmas and keep it well, you know the drill. Peace on Earth, good will towards men. And, I’ll dare say, God bless.