Breathes a life of gathering doom?

'Life is pain Highness, anyone who says otherwise is selling something...' 

~The Princess Bride~ 

The Dread Pirate Roberts might be onto something there.  I've always wondered why I've loathed the cheesy side of Christmas: all the fake, saccharine coated cheer forcefully manufactured by the retail industry and pop culture that has caused many a soul to wonder guiltily why they aren't as banally cheerful this holiday season as 'everyone else' seems to be, little knowing that we are all haunted by loneliness and fear and grief to some extent which the glaringly garish holiday lights only make all the more blatantly obvious to the eyes of our already disquiet soul.  Our hearts know innately what the over-the-top Christmas bonanza is trying viciously to hide: our Joy is ever tainted with sorrow.  And that's okay, that's how it has always been, even from the beginning, but amid that sorrow, that fear, that loneliness, that shame, there is 'Joy unspeakable and full of glory.'  Yes, glory, not ludicrous banality run rampant, a garish color of paint trying to hide a gaping defect in the very walls of our being, but a the true Something that can fill that defect and vanquish the sorrow.  The gospel accounts of that first Christmas are rife with it, as are the very best of the Christmas songs.  Savor the verses of 'We Three Kings,' for a moment, a song I've long overlooked and dismissed as a little odd and certainly ridiculous, but whose lesser known verses are truly full of the wonder and glory, and certainly the sorrow, that mark this intriguing season, or at least should:

We three kings of Orient are;

Bearing gifts we traverse afar,

Field and fountain, moor and mountain,

Following yonder star

O star of wonder, star of night,

Star with royal beauty bright,

Westward leading, still proceeding,

Guide us to thy perfect light.

Born a King on Bethlehem’s plain

Gold I bring to crown Him again,

King forever, ceasing never,

Over us all to reign.

Frankincense to offer have I;

Incense owns a Deity nigh;

Prayer and praising, voices raising,

Worshiping God on high.

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume

Breathes a life of gathering gloom;

Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,

Sealed in the stone cold tomb.

Glorious now behold Him arise;

King and God and sacrifice;

Alleluia!, Alleluia!,

Rings through the earth and skies.