For many, Christmas can a hard time of year

Somehow, for a good many years, I misplaced Christmas.

As far as I can figure, it happened about 40 years ago. I crossed that invisible but all-too-real border between childhood and adulthood, and Christmas lost its magic for me.

Oh, getting gifts was OK, but I could buy for myself most of what I really wanted. Giving was a real hassle -- fighting the lines in crowded stores just to buy something I wasn't all too sure anyone else actually wanted.

And, as much as I wanted to, I just couldn't get excited about the birth of a child 2,000 years ago who was later going to be murdered for proclaiming love as the answer to our problems.

Sad, yes; excited, no.

Since that first disillusioning realization that Christmas was no longer very "Christmasey" for me, I struggled to regain some sense of what Christmas is really about. I tried hard not to fall into Scrooge's trap of just "bah-humbugging" the whole idea, but it wasn't always easy.

When family, friends and the whole world seems to be celebrating, it's hard not to feel bitter about one's own lack of holiday cheer.

One thing that helped me was a growing awareness that there were an awful lot of people who were in the same boat as me.

In fact, one of the real awakenings in the counseling profession has been to the fact that Christmas can be an extremely depressing time for people. Counseling centers get more calls, hotlines like "The Yule-Tide Connection" are busy, alcohol abuse increases and suicides rise.

What's so hard about Christmas?

A lot. Christmas is a time when we gather with those we love to celebrate our present good fortune, to remember the past and hope for the future. And many of us do so from the perspective of the Christian faith.

But if we have few loved ones to gather with, Christmas is a lonely reminder of that. If our present is full of pain and insecurity, Christmas only serves to magnify those feelings.

Sure, reflecting on years gone by can be pleasant, but there are also a lot of sad memories that can arise to haunt our holidays.

For a good many of us, looking ahead is anything but a reassuring experience. Our faith can even be called into question as we confront our ambivalence about our Christmas observance.

Lonely, hurt, insecure, sad, anxious, doubting -- not exactly the recipe for Christmas cheer. Unfortunately, those are the ingredients many of us must work with during the holiday season. No wonder a lot of people dread it.

We can make something better of Christmas. There is potential there. I want to offer you some of my thoughts on how to rediscover Christmas -- not so much as a counselor, but as a fellow seeker in the quest for Christmas.

First, I've had to learn a difficult lesson -- the real Christmas is found in the giving of ourselves. When I was a child, I was convinced that Christmas was in the giving and getting of things.

It wasn't until I found myself all choked up while reading my own daughter a Christmas story that I realized how important it could be for me to give myself to another person at Christmas.

Simply learning that lesson that sounds like a typical Christmas cliché wasn't enough, though. It had to be put into practice. I had to force myself to make the effort to reach out to those around me.

That wasn't too hard with my daughter, but it wasn't that easy to do with people on my job, or at my church, or those whom I just bumped into on the street. It meant taking an extra minute to ask, "How are you?" and trying to mean it.

And it meant searching out other people who seem to be battling their own Christmas depression and sharing with them a little of my own struggle. Not easy things to do, but if the whole point of Christmas is to celebrate God's gift of a person -- Jesus -- to us, then it seemed to make sense that I might find Christmas by giving a gift of "my person" to others.

It seems to have helped. I still don't get as excited about Christmas as when I was a kid; maybe I never will. But I am at peace with the holidays. I think I might have discovered what they are really about.

Maybe you can discover your misplaced Christmas the same way I did. Give yourself a chance. Give yourself.