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Part 1. At a time of gathering and celebration and joy, many of us are struggling tremendously this year. Those who are hospitalized or in nursing home care have been isolated from family members for months, and with recent COVID surges, many can't have visitors even for Christmas. What is Christmas when you're sick and isolated and see no end in sight? Those who are single and don't have families of their own often feel left out at Christmastime, but this year, they've also been isolated and unable to socialize since March. Some of them can't even travel to visit parents and other family members to join in holiday celebrations this year. Those who are divorced may be without their children, after a long year when custody-sharing has been fraught anyway. What is Christmas when you're alone? Those with families may be approaching Christmas this year completely exhausted. They've been working and homeschooling and dealing with the needs of socially-deprived children, not to mention themselves. They may feel they haven't been able to 'do' Christmas properly this year as they scramble to keep up with all their demands. Many have become unemployed, and are facing a Christmas where they were unable to provide gifts for their children. What is Christmas when you can't provide a magical season for your own children? And some are facing Christmas for the first time without loved ones who have passed on, perhaps even due to the pandemic, and are having trouble feeling joy when all the traditions and celebrations merely exacerbate their sense of loneliness and loss. What is Christmas when it just reminds you of sadness? In December 2012, everything fell apart. Our oldest child, who struggled with mental illness, left our home almost immediately after she turned 18, and went to live with a friend's family claiming, falsely, that she was being abused at home. I had been ill for many weeks and was devastated. We were left trying to help our younger children, who were confused and upset by her departure, try to cope with their own emotions and feelings of loss. My husband, a student at the time, was divided between end-of-semester schoolwork and the upheaval at home, and ended up feeling like he had failed on both fronts. Meanwhile Christmas crept ever closer, and I was too sick and overwhelmed to do anything about it. I would find out I was (unexpectedly) pregnant not long before we received a phone call from our daughter's school reporting a significant psychological event that required emergency intervention. I ended up, two weeks before Christmas, leaving my beloved firstborn at a psychiatric hospital. We had no presents, no tree, and no emotional energy left to cope with an unexpected and ill-timed pregnancy. We lived far away from any family and faced the prospect of a Christmas day that we would be spending as visitors in a psych hospital. At some point in all this, our ward was having a Christmas party at a ward member's home. My husband didn't have the heart for parties, but I decided I needed something fun and celebratory, so I went to the party to lift my spirits. As soon as I walked in, I realized I had made a terrible mistake. The darling decorations, the superb table of Christmas treats, the festive music in the background, the hum of happy voices-they all made me feel like a foreign interloper. These light, fun trappings had no relation to my life. I couldn-t enjoy them. They just made me feel worse. I walked over to the table of treats to grab a distraction. But it was too cute; it was such a contrast to the dreary institutional food my child was eating on plastic trays with a soft plastic spoon, it sent me into a flood a tears. So there I was, standing alone at the edge of a room full of happy people, just crying and unable to stop.

⁠— Kim White