“If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.” – Harlan Ellison

For the past few weeks, I’ve been on a writer’s search to understand Christmas, a bloated, emotionalized, commercialized, pressured time of year that many people love and many people dread. I’ve learned a lot about Christmas, heard from many people, read a bunch of good and honest books. For me, the journey has been rich and successful. I’m not a Christian, or conventionally religious, I am very drawn to the work and passions of Jesus Christ.

My writings have made their way around the Internet, I’ve gotten a lot of praise and interest, and as is my special gift, have annoyed some people who would prefer to just enjoy the holiday and not think so much about it. Too much self-referential thinking is not healthy at any time.

But Christmas is a good time for it. It is an important holiday, and in some ways, a dangerous one for some people.

I’ve found some ways for me to love the holiday again, many stemming from my inquiry into the real and very compelling life of Jesus Christ, whose birthday we celebrate on Friday, but whose beliefs and intentions no longer fit into this multi-billion dollar ($500 billion, to be exact)  binge and increasingly secular festival we call Christmas.

I’ve gotten hundreds of messages about Christmas, most thanking me for writing about it, and the great bulk of them talk about the pain of dealing with family at Christmas. Because this is such a family holiday, family issues often come to the fore.  I’ve talked to a score of more of friends and townspeople about Christmas, and many say the same thing in almost exactly the same words:

“My family doesn’t really get along,” said Mary Sue, “Christmas is hard for us, we just don’t fit well together but we all feel we have to do it for Mom and Dad, who pretend not to notice. For me, that’s a lot of pressure.”

Kelly told me the pressure she feels is to give the right presents for her four children, the latest, most sought after things. “They have to go back to school next week and tell their friends what they got – actually they go on Facebook or Instagram Christmas Day and tell them what they got. I don’t want them to be ashamed.”

Jim moved from Maine to Ohio, and his real family – the very close friends he and his wife have made in Church – are there. He would much prefer to celebrate the holiday with them, but he can’t bear to hurt his mother’s feelings.

The Biblical narratives suggest that Jesus was a powerful healer, a passive conduit, says author Reza Aslan, “through which healing power coursed liked an electrical current.” Some thought he was a magician, sometimes resorting to musician’s tricks. The early Christians related many tales of his powers of healing – helping the blind see, the deaf hear, the mute speak. But they were all careful to never speak of him as a magician.

A representative of God – Moses, Elijah, Elisha – performs miracles, whereas “false prophets” – the wise men of the Pharoah or the priests of Baal or the Temple Of Jerusalem – perform magic. Stories of Jesus’s powers of healing made  him famous in Israel, helped spread the word about his radical and somewhat rebellious ministry, and attracted the attention of the priests and Romans.

So it seems to me that Christmas ought to be a healing time, as well as time to give hope to the poor in a substantive way.  Jesus promised so much more than soup kitchens and shelters for the poor – they would soon enter a new kingdom, he said, the Kingdom of God, a new age of love and justice. And pity the rich when that happened, he said, they would be the ones hopeless and  weeping. Jesus was non-violent to his friends and followers, not so gentle with priests and the wealthy.

In Bethsaida, Jesus placed his fingers on a deaf man’s ears, spat, touch his tongue and, looking up to the heavens, chanted the word ephphatha, which means “be opened” in Aramaic. Immediately, the man’s ears were opened. Unlike most of the healers of his time, Jesus never charged a fee for his services. Magicians, healers and miracle workers, exorcists – were considered skilled professionals in first-century Palestine. They were all paid for their work. One magician offered Jesus money to be trained in the art of manipulating the Holy Spirit. “May your money perish with you,” he was told, “for you thought you could purchase with money what God gives as a free gift.”

I asked a parent I know why Christmas was so important to him, why he insisted his family be present.

He said he and his wife live for Christmas, it is by far the most important time for them, and they are not particularly religious. They summon their entire, family, and their entire family comes to them. It is a nostalgic time for them, they say, they think back on all their memories of family, they ache for those times when their kids believed in Santa, and were so pure and open to joy, so strongly connected to them. “Life is hard on families,” he told me, “divorce, money troubles, illness, disappointment. Christmas seems free of that to us, especially looking backwards. I know the kids don’t really all want to be here every year, but it is the only time when life reverses itself and we can go back.”

I asked him if he could ever recognize that his family might not be close and comfortable with one another, if it were possible that they not be pressured to gather at Christmas, encouraged to experiment with a different reality. At this, he was insistent. “No, we would never give up Christmas with our family.”

I’m sure there are many children who are eager to be with their families at Christmas, and cherish the holiday, yet it does not seem to heal families that are broken or in pain. It does not seem to be a healing holiday, rather a holiday of ritual, obligation and tradition. Perhaps this where much of the suffering comes.

I wonder of this element of Christmas – the pain inherent in families – is one of the things so many people have so much trouble with, including me. My family was damaged beyond repair, Christmas gifts were a shallow and even painful way of trying to gloss over the pain and suffering.  The days following Christmas were suffused with disappointment and sadness. There was nothing in my life more stressful and uncomfortable than being forced to be with my family and travel great distances to wallow in its dysfunction and unhappiness. And then have to pretend to love it. I gritted my teeth through every dinner.

Researchers and psychologists have written for years about this dark side of Christmas, it is  rarely mentioned but no secret. Psychology Today reports that while we are told that Christmas is the happiest and most joyous time of year, an opportunity to be joyful and grateful with family, the National Institutes of Health reports that Christmas is the time of year that people experience the highest levels of depression, suicide and attempted suicide. The reason, they say,  appears to have much to do with unrealistic expectations, the growing commercialization of the holiday,  and a sense of failure at feeling very normal emotions.

“The idea of family is considered sacred in our culture, our true sense of safety and origin,” wrote one psychiatrist who has written about anxiety and the holidays. “It is almost heretical for a child or parent to say they would rather be somewhere else, doing something else at Christmas. That may or may not be a good thing, but it is certainly pressure. Families can’t give up on themselves, it’s not like getting divorced.”

And, she wrote, the reality people often present – the beautiful, grateful, happy family, the gorgeous feast, the joyous experience – is not something many people can attain.This is why Graham Green called Christmas the Feast Of Failures.

Leo Tolstoy wrote once that all happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. And I think it is the people in the unhappy families who struggle so much with anxiety and depression over the holidays. Jay McInerney once wrote that friendship is God’s way of apologizing for families and giving us a chance to build new ones.

Anna Freud wrote that all parents damage their children, it is unavoidable. Some children are scraped, some smudged, some broken into pieces.  Christmas can be challenging for all children, often caught between nostalgia, pressure and the realities of life. We often struggle to build new lives, and are sometime pulled back reluctantly into the old ones. For some, this is comfort and joy. For others, it is anxiety and pain. One person’s nostalgia is another’s nightmare.

I do not get depressed at Christmas, and have never contemplated suicide during the holidays. I  have found much love and connection and excitement at Christmas over the years, especially as I moved to create my own community, my own idea of family. I also am coming to see Christmas as a healing holiday, something I think the man who inspired it would have wanted. Healing is now a major part of my Christmas, as big as gift giving or elaborate family celebrations – those do not ever work for me, or for Maria. I acknowledge the joy in Christmas, but I also acknowledge the pain, I manage it in that way.

I have let go of the idea of family for me in the traditional  sense, they are either scattered or gone. I do not expect it to ever be different, so I will not be depressed or disappointed on Saturday. I feel better, healed, refreshed, connected.

Maria and I share this new way of understanding Christmas.  Healing is a profoundly religious idea, but also one for the secular. Christmas can be very important and uplifting holiday for us.  Gifts fit in somewhere, but it is not about gifts. We meditate, forgive our families and work to love them, struggle to be more forgiving of ourselves and others.

We celebrate our love for one another.

At Christmas, we also celebrate our friends, they are our new family. We are building a new history, we will  treat them with love and respect.