Column: Cherish holidays in good times and bad

• As in fiction and movies, many of us have experienced unhappy holidays.
• But in the end they are redeemed.
• This season, reconnect with past traditions, but create news ones, too.

Many stories of the Christmas season deal with the subject of the ones that are almost lost — but in the end are redeemed. The message of Ebenezer Scrooge's experience in Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol is that while we have life, we can banish lost Christmases by mending relationships and embracing the season's call to be generous. Or like George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life, we may need to honor our own worth, whatever failures life has handed us, and celebrate what is important in the end — family and community.

Many of us have experienced lost Christmases sometime in our lives. In real life as in fiction, some Christmases are lost due to a loss of a family member or a disagreement. Those Christmases are memorable because Christmas became the opposite of what it's supposed to be, a time of loss and sadness, not celebration and cheer. That undoubtedly will be what is experienced this Christmas in Newtown, Conn.

As troubles may loom in our personal lives with job or family issues, it might be a good time to reflect on what makes Christmas joyous for us, and redeem the spirit of the season, if it's in our power to do so. As in old Christmas stories, perhaps a bridge in a relationship might be rebuilt, an old unhappiness with a job or a loved one must be let go, or some old grudge can be forgotten.

Life and death

My lost Christmases all involved someone's death, so there were no bridges to rebuild, no grudges to be left behind, nothing I could do. My husband's father died Christmas Day, 1982. However, the sorrow of that Christmas was replaced by something else, the deep sympathy of people in the community who put their hearts around us and folded us into their care, a love that lasted through many years.

Also, we discovered that time had a callously relentless way of moving us forward, pulling us back into life, like it or not, and moving us physically and emotionally forward, as inconsolable as we were in our loss. The next several Christmases had a somber moment of remembrance, of course. But later, the somberness was supplanted by the heart-warming notion of how happy my dear lost father-in-law would have been, seeing the family increase and the Christmas table get more crowded with laughter. In essence, over the decades, that lost Christmas was redeemed by the sense of family joy he himself possessed in such large measure, carried on through his children and grandchildren.

The amazing thing about Christmas is that it does remake itself every year. While there might be some continuity to the holiday — the foods on the table, ornaments on the tree, seasonal festivities in our towns — Christmas is a wonderfully dynamic human holiday with something new brought to the celebration every year. Like life itself, Christmas is moved forward by births, graduations, weddings, new jobs, new houses, new gifts on the wish lists, new hopes, new dreams. It is a holiday reborn every year out of the fabric of life itself. Christmas is about its possibilities and richness as much as its occasional disappointments and tragedies.

Time for family, friends

The best and most enduring thing about Christmas is that we are together, in bad times and good, though the "we" may be reconstituted from year to year. Getting together — with family, friends, acquaintances, fellow church members and work colleagues — for the precious moments of Christmas each year is the central redemptive activity of the season.

In my family this year, there is a new chortling granddaughter joining the table in a high chair, named for my beloved grandmother, gone nearly 40 years. There is a beautiful new bride at the table, too, and the loving embrace of her large and wonderful family. Of course, my small golden circle of family in Christmases past was irrevocably broken by time and loss. But it was made anew with more people to love, more joy at the table.

In many of our celebrations, we have only to look around, remembering what has been lost, but mindful too of what has been found, like a secret gift. No Christmas is lost for long.

Alcestis "Cooky" Oberg is a member of USA TODAY'S Board of Contributors and lives near Houston.

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