Christmastime is here again, and I’m beginning to feel that familiar emptiness that tends to haunt me at this time of year.

Both of my parents are gone, and we are a family of grown-ups. My siblings have their own families and rituals to perform. I don’t have any children of my own to make Christmas for, and so here I am again, trying to figure out what the heck Christmas really means to me. 

My husband and I try to make the best of this holiday. We shower each other with gifts, we buy presents for his adult children and our good friends, and we buy a tree and decorate it. I’m even baking freaking cookies this year to try and conjure up some holiday joy, but I’m still left feeling cold and a little sad.

Of course I miss my mom and dad, and I romanticize the Christmases of my childhood. I think back fondly to the Easy Bake oven that my parents bought me when I was 6, and to the red ten-speed that I got when I was 12. In our house, there were always stockings filled with candy and Slim Jims and assorted little toys.

A typical kid, I waited for Santa Claus with my older brother, “did you hear something on the roof?” one of us would ask with a giggle. Like most children on Christmas Eve, we were filled with anticipation and delight. It was too hard to fall asleep knowing that the morning would bring great treasure!

We were an Italian Catholic family, so of course our family Christmas tradition included the celebration of the birth of Jesus (as well as delicious home-made ravioli) but as a little kid, I was thinking more about the presents under the tree than about a Savior being born in a manger. We went to Christmas mass as a family every year before my dad died, but after he was gone, that all changed.

My older sisters were out of the house by then, and my mom had taken up with a protestant who didn’t practice any kind of religion. It really didn’t matter anyway, because at about age 15, I had turned my back on religion, and stopped taking God very seriously. Perhaps it was just a developmental thing, or maybe it was a result of the trauma and anxiety that I had suffered, but for me, religion and God stopped being a solution, or even a comfort in my young life.

Catholicism had become a part of my DNA though, and although I have explored other forms of religion in adulthood, I’ve never been able to shed the notion that once you’re baptized a Catholic, you’re a Catholic until death.  I maintain a subtle fear of completely turning my back on Catholicism, because a voice inside always whispers, “what if they were right all along and I end up in eternal darkness?” I sometimes secretly envy those who have chosen to abandon logic and reason for an absolute and unwavering faith. In this abandon they find comfort and connection. In their faith, they have nothing to fear, not even death.

Whoa, that’s heavy man.

Yep, I always start thinking about Jesus and God at Christmastime.  I have this anxious need to give it a deeper meaning, so I tend to fall back upon my Catholic concept of God and Jesus. I even went to the local Catholic Church yesterday and bought an Advent wreath, thinking that it would help me to connect with Jesus.  I WANT to believe in their version of Jesus at this time of year. Perhaps if I have this “magical” advent wreath I told myself, if I light a candle on each Advent Sunday’ and say a prayer, maybe this will create some of the faith and connection that I seem to crave.

I even watched the religious epic "King Of Kings" to try and inspire some Christmas connection.  In K of K’s , Jeffrey Hunter portrays the sexiest Jesus of any of the religious movies of that era. I mean, compare him to Max Von Sydow in the Greatest Story Ever Told, and you’ll see what I’m saying.  (Note: catch Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike in the Star Trek series pilot)

This movie evokes images of my father and his big wooden rosary that he used for prayer, and of a portrait of Jesus that hung in my childhood home. It’s weird, but I feel kind of comforted when I watch this movie now-- in part because it brings back warm memories of my dad. But if I search myself more deeply it brings up feelings of loss. I want the Jesus of my childhood to be real, and I grieve a little  when I realize that I can’t have my father’s Jesus, my fantasy Jesus.  Well, not Jeffrey Hunter anyhow.

I really like Jesus---truly I do. I even love him. I just don’t happen to believe in the resurrection or the Catholic/Christian concept of heaven and eternal life. Yet, I still want to celebrate Jesus in some way.

The other day my husband and I were walking the dogs and I asked him, “do you like Jesus?” “Sure, I like Jesus” he answered. ‘So why don’t we just celebrate his birthday?” I proclaimed, as if this was a radical and new idea. Then I went on to explain that of course Jesus probably wasn’t born on December 25th, and that in fact, Christmas was originally a pagan holiday, but we’ll set all of that aside and celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth---probably one of the most centered and enlightened men in written history.  This seems like an elegant solution for the moment.

To say that my thoughts and feelings are complicated about religion and spirituality is an accurate statement. I’m still searching for a spiritual center in my life, but at the end of the day, this search has little if anything to do with the holiday called Christmas.

Oh, Merry Christmas everyone.