A Childless Couple at Christmas
We do not keep our grief from one another and it is not a constant one. A friend once said of her singleness, “It hits but doesn’t haunt,” and I’ve found that an apt way to describe unplanned childlessness for us too. It hits at times, but doesn’t haunt always. It hits on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and when we hold a friend’s baby or when we open Christmas cards of growing families with growing children.
All the traditions we knew as children ourselves are hard to implement in a home where there are no children to replicate them. Stocking stuffers are lackluster, the magic of cookies and milk falls flat, there are no prebedtime jitters or early morning wake ups, no wrapping paper spread hither and yon. There is only a quiet and ordinary series of mornings, with quiet and ordinary cups of coffee and tea, and quiet and ordinary comments and conversations. We have to invent the traditions that cultivate joy for us in the absence of sharing in our children’s joy.
I recognize that our commercials and stores and social media is full, brimming over with ways to make your children’s holiday special, but I also recognize many are without children (and not without hope for them still), and may want to cultivate joy-filled practices still. While everyone else is running around like crazy, trying to figure out how to slow down, you may have the opposite problem. It might feel so empty and slow that it leaves almost too much space for ruminating on your current childlessness. I believe that grief is good and needs time and space to be processed and prayed through, but when that processing turns to wallowing, we may just need something to DO with our time.
Here are a few ways we’ve learned to inhabit the season and imbue it with meaning:
Nate and I began a new tradition of choosing four of our favorite novels each for the other to read over the winter. We decided a page count of 1600 total was reasonable for the amount of fiction reading time we each have, and the other day we both finished our first book from the other. I read The Sparrow and he read Gilead. Next up for him is The Heart of the Matter and for me is The Sympathizer.
As I mentioned recently, we also do an Advent reading together. While our friends with kids might find it difficult to wrangle everyone together or try to eke cheerfulness and joy from their kids for daily readings, we don’t have the problem. We just need to bring our road-worn selves to the couch, light the candles, read the book, briefly discuss, pray, and move on.
In the past we had a four gift “rule.” I put quotes around rule because I always broke that rule but my ever-disciplined husband has always done a better job of keeping it. Something to wear, something to read, something we want, something we need. This year, though, we’ve decided to spread out our gift-giving to the twelve days of Christmas, one gift a day. Some gifts are larger, like snowshoes of our own, and some are small, like beard balm or a bath bomb. My aim is always for something that is useful or beautiful (a la William Morris). Married couples with multiple children may limit their gifts for one another, electing to give more to their kids. And that’s fine! But they have the gift of children and we don’t, so we don’t act like we have to celebrate in the same way.
We choose one new ornament for our tree each year that signifies something of meaning to us. We have a little puppy for the year we got Harper, a pair of turtledoves for the year we married, a hand-painted clay orb from the year we went to Santa Fe, and more. Each one of them tells a small story from our year. Our tree is not as decked out with childish crafts and low-hanging ornaments, but it’s still a meaningful tree to us.
We make a bunch of baked goods and deliver them to our neighbors. One year it was cookies, another year it was soup, last year it was strawberry-rhubarb crisp. I have my eye on a cinnamon roll recipe for this year. We see our neighbors pretty regularly, but it’s just one small way to touch base with them and tell them we love them and see them. We deliver them on Christmas Eve.
Speaking of Christmas Eve, we don’t sweat it. We usually go to church and in years past have either been working or serving at church on CE, but we don’t sweat the photos and clothing etc.. If we feel like it, we might snap a selfie, but we don’t feel pressured to get gussied up and have someone take our photo. Sometimes—not always, but sometimes—seeing those pics of family after family come across our timeline or in the mail can be a bit of painful reminder each time. That doesn’t mean we don’t LOVE to see them, it just means if we don’t ask God to guard our hearts, they can haunt our season more than we’d like them to. Seeing yet another photo of just us again can also contribute to that haunting. We much prefer to snap a candid shot while kayaking or doing something we love together on not Christmas.
We boot up and bundle up and go for a walk or hike. I don’t think we planned this to be a Christmas Day tradition, but it’s become one the past several years. It’s good to move our bodies and breathe the air and enjoy the quiet Christmassy world.
We don’t do a big meal on Christmas Day. In years when we’ve had lots of unmarried folks for Christmas, we would just do a big charcuterie spread together and that tradition has carried over to these quieter days. We make a two-person spread and turn on a holiday movie we love (The Family Stone or Little Women or Elf or queue up an epic series) and just enjoy a quiet day together. It is not the same as the ruckus that’s happening in other homes, but it doesn’t mean it isn’t as beautiful or important. It is. It’s just a different beautiful.
For almost a decade we’ve been answering the same set of questions each New Year’s Day. We spend a whole day and sometimes two on the questions, taking our time, staying in our sweats, drinking tea and listening to music. We don’t rush ourselves or one another. When we’ve both finished, we review last year’s questions together and then share our answers to this year’s. It has been such a helpful and hopeful exercise for both of us. Yes, a family with kids might find the time to do this difficult, but we have the space and so we can.
It’s been said that comparison is the thief of joy, and so whenever we notice comparison sneaking in, we want to note it, ask God to heal whatever’s happening there, and then move through it. But I find comparison in this area of having children/childlessness (as well as marriage/singleness) particularly invasive for our souls. If we have children, we can lament the time and space those without have. If we don’t, we can lament the craziness and joy those families have.
One of the ways I’ve learned and am learning to press back comparison and enter into the joy God has for me and my house, is to lean into the gift he has given instead of the gift he hasn’t. He has given us time, space, and resources. That is the gift we have in the lack of the gift of children. It is not a better gift or a worse gift or a more sanctifying gift or a more difficult gift. It’s just another and different gift. And I want to receive it with joy. I don’t always. But I want to. These practices help me. Maybe they’ll help you, too.
