Grief Awareness Week: Coping With Grief at Christmas

Navigating Grief During a Time of Celebration

Winter symbolises a time for rest and reflection, bringing to close all of the memories from the past year for us to reflect upon. In many cultures, winter is also symbolic of death, or signifies a period of change. When we lose those we love, in our grief, we learn to hold them close in new ways. Though they may no longer walk beside us, they are with us always. Their laughter lives in the breeze, their smiles shine in the stars, and their warmth is felt in every tender thought. Grief speaks of a bond, so eternal and so deep that even death cannot sever it.

The dreariness of winter is lit up by the festival of Christmas, a time for families to come together and celebrate. But for many families the end of another year and the coming of Christmas can be a bittersweet time. For those grieving the loss of a child, Christmas can feel painfully out of step with the heart’s reality.

Often the hardest part of this season is the pressure to carry on as though nothing has changed. Those around might not understand what you’re going through and may expect you to “feel better now”– as though you’re recovering from the flu! If you’re barely making it through each day, the pressure to be festive can be unbearable.

Understanding the Pain of Christmas After Bereavement

If you are entering this season carrying grief, please know this: you are not alone, and there is no right or wrong way to move through the holidays. Grief Awareness Week offers a moment to shine a gentle light on the experiences so many families live quietly, especially during a season that often amplifies absence.

I remember a bereaved mum sharing that during Eid, she just wanted to leave the house because she felt she was “bringing down the mood”. I remember thinking that it must feel so incredibly exhausting and lonely to have to mask what you’re feeling or remove yourself entirely because you fear your grief might overshadow others’ happiness.

It can be especially complicated if you have other children who want the same festive traditions, and you still want to make the season special for them, this can leave parents feeling torn between not really wanting to celebrate but still having to try. Maybe there’s some parts of Christmas which do comfort you; a mug of hot chocolate might be a moment of light, or listening to a crackling wood fire. Our grief is personal and navigating the season is about learning what caring for your heart looks like now.

This season, let permission be your companion:

• Permission to say no to gatherings or traditions you can’t face this year.
• Permission to participate in the parts that feel comforting or grounding.
• Permission to rest, to cry, to step outside when you need air.
• Permission to honour your child in quiet or in community.
• Permission to experience moments of joy without guilt.

There is strength in choosing what you need, not what the season expects.

Parents often feel guilty for finding moments of joy in their life again but allow the moments where you feel okay or happy again, allow yourself to feel okay, it’s not being disloyal to your child. That love for your child always lives in you.

How to Support Someone Grieving at Christmas

If you are reading this wondering how to support someone grieving at Christmas time, it starts right there – allow them to share just how hard the holiday is for them, acknowledge this, acknowledge that grief doesn’t fade just because the calendar says it’s a time for joy. Grief does not take a holiday.

Put the child’s name in your Christmas card to the family; the child they’ve lost is always a part of their family, they have not just been airbrushed out of their lives. Share memories and remember their child together, don’t let their memory fade, this might just be the most precious gift you could offer a bereaved parent this Christmas. Yes, they might get teary when you speak about their child, but parents love to speak about their child just as anyone likes to talk about loved ones lost. Hold that space with them, be a compassionate presence, you can’t fix anything so don’t worry about having the answers, just listen and be alongside them, be a hand to hold in their darkness.

This Christmas light a candle, raise a glass to your child, bring them back around the table. Whether you celebrate with traditions you did before your child died or want to make new traditions or want to skip the season altogether, there is no set way to make it through the festive period.

Christmas will never be the same after the loss of a child, but it does not need to be. Instead of striving for the holidays you once knew, allow yourself to meet this season with honesty and tenderness. You are doing the best you can in a situation no parent or family should ever have to face.

May this season offer you pockets of peace, space to breathe, and gentle ways to honour the child who will forever be part of your story.

Light up a Life

We hold our Light up a Life events at this time of year so that we can dedicate a night to them together, so that we can say their names, remember them, include them in the joy of Christmas. We recognise that the love for those lost, is the most profound force within you and it is in that love that they live on. So Light up their life, and keep their memory burning bright all through the dreary winter and forevermore.

Written by Saarah Hamayun, Spiritual Care Practitioner at Martin House Children’s Hospice.