Christmas blues prompt musical gatherings for hope, healing

Anyone feeling blue this Christmas season has reminders they’re not alone.

For such reasons as a loss of a loved one or job, and coping with an addiction, illness or loneliness, people might not find so easily the joy that typifies this time of year .

Everyone’s invited to “A Blue Christmas Service of Healing and Hope,” at noon Tuesday at Trinity Church, 3000 N. Kings Highway, Myrtle Beach, and “Light in the Darkness Service,” 7 p.m. Dec. 16 in the chapel at St Paul’s Church, 710 Main St., Conway. These musical ceremonies are free, each with a reception afterward.

From Trinity Church, Ashley Sosis, director of music, and the Rev. Iain Boyd, rector, shared insight into their hopes and intentions for their “Blue Christmas” gathering.

Question | Is this “Blue Christmas” service an annual event, or poised to become one, in what really spans a month-long season begun with Thanksgiving and concluded with New Year’s?

Boyd | We want to do whatever is of most service for the community. If this service is of help to people struggling through the holidays, then we will be glad to go on doing it.

Sosis | I really loved the idea of doing a musically eclectic service in December that would offer comfort to anyone who was not looking forward to Christmas because of a loss. It is difficult to get away from reminders of this grief while the rest of the world approaches this season earlier and earlier each year.

Q. | What certain songs and passages provide tried-and-true, positive, pick-someone-up kind of words?

Sosis | “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me ... .” Our Blue Christmas service is a collection of readings and songs that have comforting words, or are themselves prayers for comfort. In addition to “Amazing Grace” and a contemporary Christian song by Danielle Rose, “At the Eucharist,” our service will include Christmas hymns “Silent Night” and “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” and Advent hymns “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” and “Comfort, Comfort Ye My People.”

Q. | What makes a candle lighting so touching for someone in connecting with a memory and as a reminder to smile inside at having had such moments on this Earth for which to be thankful?

Boyd | Grief is a heavy burden for people to carry. As Christians, we do not believe any person has to carry that burden by his or herself. The lighting of the candle is a way of offering up the weight of grief, sadness, anxiety, and all the other emotions that a person is carrying over to Christ, who took up the heaviest burden possible for them by bearing His cross.

Q. | In serving a community through your congregation, what demographics are seen with folks who have the inevitable, and understandable, task of coping with sadness and loneliness at this time year touted as joyous in all the marketing and advertising?

Boyd | No demographic is freed from sadness and loneliness. We often think we carry these things alone and no one else bears them like we do. Everywhere you look, however, people struggle in their own ways. Young adults lose parents too early. Children move out of the house, leaving it empty and quiet for the holiday season. Parents struggle to provide for their children every month and don’t know how to make Christmas special for their kids. Couples face yet another Christmas without the blessing of children. Single people long for companionship. Divorce, disease and death leave spouses feeling lonely and lost. Young people move across the country for a new job and won’t be at home for traditions they’ve enjoyed their whole lives. People grieve for any number of reasons, and it’s our hope to tell them, “Your grief is real, and not only do we care, but the God who let His Son be born in a manger cares as well.”

Q. | Besides widowed individuals, who else, such as Gold and Blue Star Mothers, might be too easily overlooked and forgotten, and in need of a reminder that care comes from a bigger circle?

Boyd | We all need connection with a community larger than ourselves. There are many people out there whose grief doesn’t put them into a community like that. We often prioritize emotional pain or grief so that this group needs more help than another. We want people to know that whatever the cause of their pain, the pain itself is real, and we serve a God who cares. I have never found a verse in the Bible that says, “Why are you crying? Don’t you realize how bad so and so has it?” Rather, Psalm 56:8 says “You have kept count of my tossing, put my tears in a bottle.” To know the loving care of the Big Hearted Father is the need of every person, and we don’t want anyone to be overlooked.

Q. | Do you as a musician have a favorite version of “Blue Christmas” to hear at home, in t or on the radio? (Elvis Presley’s version was so much more up tempo than say, the more solemn recordings by such artists as The Beach Boys and Vince Gill.)

Sosis | What a fun question! I was very happy to hear that Post Modern Jukebox followed up their popular cover of “All About that Bass,” featuring Kate Davis on vocals and acoustic bass, with a sweet rendition of “Blue Christmas” where she also plays and sings. What is even more fun for me is that bassist Adam Kubota pops up at the end of the video (www.youtube.com/watch?v=F47GKeoRo_s), and I get to say, “Hey, I know that guy,” because we were undergraduates together at the Hartt School, at the University of Hartford in Connecticut, many years ago.

This story was originally published December 6, 2015 at 7:00 AM with the headline "Christmas blues prompt musical gatherings for hope, healing."