I found myself tearing up at a church service on the first Sunday of the Advent season because a choir was onstage. The small choir, harmonious voices, and dedicated conductor prompted thoughts of my own father, who for years had led the choir at our small, Asian-American community church where I grew up. He now has profound, progressive hearing loss, and the thought of these loved things lost – choir, concerts, twinkling laughter – brought forth unexpected waves of sentiment. Yet, I was comforted by the acceptance, and even peace, with which my father is navigating loss. As I sat in appreciation for the music, my father, and this season, this concept of waiting, with pain and with hope, remained top-of-mind.
Around this time of year, our chronic pain clinic often begins seeing increased referrals. One year, in reflecting upon several patient stories, I performed a quick online search for “pain and the holidays.” Instantly, hundreds of articles detailing the effects of worsening chronic pain and depression during the holidays lined my screen. The headings (“How to Survive Pain in the Holiday Season”! “When the Holidays Hurt”! “10 Ways to Keep Pain from Ruining the Holidays”!) scream a widespread, frustrating phenomenon. Many of the articles cover how increased holiday stress, excess, and expectations lead to increased negative affect and pain exacerbation. Indeed, the Christmas holidays have been empirically linked to worsening mood and decrease in subjective well-being (Sansone and Sansone; Mutz). It makes sense. Our threat appraisal systems go into holiday overdrive, affecting mind and body. Certainly, the practical burdens – the dinners to prepare (and sit through), the gifts to purchase and wrap, the social events to navigate – contribute. Furthermore, financial stress, perfectionism, loneliness, social comparisons, guilt, and change may arise as prominent end-of-year worries (American Psychological Association).
Upon first thought, the concepts of pain and hope may not seem intuitively compatible. Yet, an optimistic outlook has been found to predict adaptive pain-related outcomes, such as increased physical functioning, greater sense of self-efficacy, and lower psychological distress (Shanahan et al.; Or et al.). So, in a season of susceptibility for high pain and high stress, but which also brings focus to joyful anticipation, we may find this simple, yet formidable, meditation: acknowledge pain; nurture hope.
In Christian theology, the Advent season is demarcated as a period of preparation and waiting in anticipation of the anniversary of Jesus Christ’s birth. For participants, remembering the first coming of Christ to Earth gives reason to rejoice, while renewing a desire for the second coming (Britannica). In more liturgical traditions, Advent also signals a time of in-between, celebrating Christ’s birth, while acknowledging that pain and darkness have yet to be fully remedied (Wright). Compellingly, this state of tension – living with understanding of the existence, and even exacerbation, of suffering alongside an assurance of greater things not yet realized – celebrates the human capacity for fostering hope, even in present experiences of pain.
How then, amid holiday busyness, pains, and year-end worries may we better cultivate and nurture hope? In psychology, we often understand hope as a belief that the future will be better than the present and that we have agency to affect this change. Psychologist Charles Snyder’s Hope Theory lists three main components of hopeful thinking: identifying goals, developing pathways toward goals, and promoting agency to achieve goals (Snyder). Thus, perhaps we aspire to allow the beauty and wonder of the holiday season to help us imagine a state of more confident coping and life satisfaction. Perhaps we utilize the opportunities for social engagement to forge next steps in connecting more deeply with chosen loved ones. Perhaps, we simply whisper to our holiday-wary-selves reminders of strengths in the past year that have faithfully brought us to another year’s end and will serve us in easing into another.
Another year gone. My father is aging. He understands that likely, his hearing and health will continue to worsen, not improve. For him, hope exists not in the guarantee of a return to complete physical health but in the confidence and ability to further his values with the capacities he is afforded, day by day. For me, I am hopeful that as confidence in my own capacity for intentional living grows, so too, may the joyful anticipation of becoming a more resilient, peaceful version of myself. For all, may this season of holiday, of Advent, of reflection, bring more compassionate acknowledgement of present pains; foster intention and confidence toward reaching values-directed goals; and in this pursuit and growth, provide inspiration for hope.
Works Cited:
American Psychological Association. (2023, November 30). Even a joyous holiday season can cause stress for most Americans [Press release]. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2023/11/holiday-season-stress
Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopedia. “Advent”. Encyclopedia Britannica, 28 Nov. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Advent. Accessed 4 December 2023.
Mutz, Michael. “Christmas and Subjective Well-Being: A Research Note.” Applied Research in Quality of Life, vol. 11, Nov. 2015. ResearchGate, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-015-9441-8.
Or, Debriel Yin Ling, et al. “Hope in the Context of Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain: Relationships of Hope to Pain and Psychological Distress.” Pain Reports, vol. 6, no. 4, Oct. 2021, p. e965. PubMed Central, https://doi.org/10.1097/PR9.0000000000000965.
Sansone, Randy A., and Lori A. Sansone. “The Christmas Effect on Psychopathology.” Innovations in Clinical Neuroscience, vol. 8, no. 12, Dec. 2011, pp. 10–13.
Shanahan, Mackenzie L., et al. “Hope, Optimism, and Clinical Pain: A Meta-Analysis.” Annals of Behavioral Medicine, vol. 55, no. 9, Sept. 2021, pp. 815–32. Silverchair, https://doi.org/10.1093/abm/kaab001.
Snyder, C. R. “Hope Theory: Rainbows in the Mind.” Psychological Inquiry, vol. 13, no. 4, 2002, pp. 249–75.
Wright, N. T. Advent for Everyone: A Journey with the Apostles: A Daily Devotional. Westminster John Knox Press, 2017.
Image Credit: Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash
