I’ve always found it funny that Joni Mitchell’s “River” became a Christmas standard. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a lovely song; I used to lull my kids to sleep with it on long holiday car rides. But it’s also so achingly, desperately sad that it’s almost difficult to listen to.
But I love “River” because it evokes the essential loneliness of the Christmas season. This loneliness isn’t just the reminder of times gone by or loved ones who I can no longer share the holidays with. It’s spiritual: the sense of being not quite where I belong, on my way somewhere but maybe no closer than I was last year. Every year I try to recapture the way Christmas felt when I was younger. Sometimes I succeed, but mostly I’m left with the feeling of something that is lost forever.
This probably makes me sound like a real Yuletide bummer, doesn’t it? Christmas is actually my favorite holiday. It’s joyful and revelatory and climactic; Christ is born! I love Christmas. But I also know that most of life isn’t like that. Most of life more closely resembles Advent: waiting, unfinished, incomplete.
“River” is about something ending and settling into the emotional winter that follows. In the first verse Mitchell contrasts her sadness with the cheery celebration happening around her. Anyone who has ever had their heart broken can relate: Doesn’t it always seem like everyone else is as happy as can be when you’re dying inside? She indulges in the sort of merciless self-reflection you do after a relationship ends: a brutal clarity about your limitations, your failures.
At this point you might be wondering why I didn’t save this for Lent. But “River” speaks to us as an Advent people, waiting for the break of dawn. What makes Christmas so extraordinary is that it happens in the midst of our sadness and disappointment. Christ comes not to perfect people, but to people who are selfish and sad, people who ruin good things, make others cry, push them away.
In the wake of a breakup you believe, for a while, that you’re unworthy of love. Sometimes I feel that way about the human race just from looking at the news. But broken hearts heal, and God still comes to us, again and again.
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