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In 2015, Dallas-area resident Tiffany Strasner lost her father and younger sister in the span of months.
“The first year after you lose someone is usually the hardest, especially around Christmastime,” Strasner said. “A lot of times, people that are new in their grief … the last thing they want to do is go to a Christmas party and put on a fake smile.”
She was grateful to find a different way to mark the holiday that year in the “Blue Christmas” service at Highland Park United Methodist Church.
Churches across the D-FW area hold Blue Christmas services to support those experiencing grief, loss or other hardships during the holidays. Also called “Longest Night Service,” it’s usually held around the winter solstice, which typically falls on Dec. 21 or 22.
It’s unclear exactly when “Blue Christmas” services began, but they have been offered by churches across the country since at least the 1990s. The Rev. Dawn Anderson of Dallas’ Lovers Lane United Methodist Church organized her first Blue Christmas while volunteering at another area UMC around two decades ago. Anderson had lost her husband to suicide, and together with her friend and fellow volunteer Sharon Clepper O’Connor, she organized a simple service with recorded music and a few candles.
Anderson now hosts an annual Blue Christmas service at Lovers Lane UMC, where she lines up about 100 candles at the front of the auditorium for attendees to light and take home.
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“I think having been through deep grief myself, and some of the mental stuff that followed it … it just made me hyperaware of what people need during that time,” Anderson said.
Of her Blue Christmas service, she said, “I really kind of design mine for a person that might still be traumatized and in shock and just barely able to get out of bed. That’s the kind of person I want to make sure we offer something for. Hopefully, they leave on a hopeful note, because we remind them of how Jesus came to bring eternal life and how we’re going to see our loved ones again.”
Strasner has been coming to Anderson’s Blue Christmas services for years, following her after she moved churches. As she waits in line to light candles for her father and sister every year, she said, she always makes sure to hug Anderson.
“My grief journey [has] been going on for a ile now, so I don’t see her like I used to,” Strasner said of Anderson, adding that she no longer attends the pastor’s biweekly GriefShare meetings. But the Blue Christmas services have remained a tradition she looks forward to every year, she said.
“You get a moment to light the candle for your loved one, and then you set it next to all of the other candles that are lit. It’s just really powerful, when you go back to your seat and sit down, because you look and you see all of these candles glowing, and they’re all for someone that we’ve lost but someone whose memory still lives on in us.”