One of my favourite songs from the musical Les Miserables is Empty Chairs and Empty Tables. Marius sings it as he remembers his friends and revolutionary colleagues who are dead and gone. It never fails to move me deeply.

Christmas is a time when we’re especially aware of those empty places round the table. I’m thinking especially of loved ones who have died. But the empty places also evoke those alive but no longer with us at home, those in residential care or family members we’ve fallen out with or with whom we have too little contact.

In my job as a vicar, I’ve done many many funerals over the years. Very often people do something very different for the first Christmas after the death of their loved one. Deliberately avoiding the familiar pattern of a family Christmas because of the pain of the one who isn’t there and is so deeply missed. Other anniversaries may be equally difficult. I’ve known some people who used to come regularly to Church at Christmas stop coming because the funeral of the loved one was held there and the memories are too strong.

I try to help grieving folk see that it is Christmas which brings them hope in their mourning. Yes, Christmas will be different, and hard, especially in the first years. But the love we celebrate at Christmas, God’s love revealed in the baby Jesus, is the promise that love is stronger than death. That we’re all part of a bigger story which promises healing and restoration. We will be with our loved one again.

The baby Jesus grew up and the time came when Jesus’ disciples gathered round a feast for their ‘last communion’. When he was arrested and crucified, how empty his place must have seemed to them! Then he was suddenly with them again having risen from the dead. His resurrection is a promise and a call for all of us to trust him in the face of the harsh mystery of death, believing with Mother Julian of Norwich that somehow “All Shall be Well”.

Our Christmas pattern may change but we can face the reality of loss with hope, and raise a glass to our absent loved ones, with whom we are in ‘mystical communion’, and celebrate the feast of Christ more truly and deeply. And sing the carols which capture the true essence of Christmas with hopeful promises including this from Once in Royal David’s City:

For that child so dear and gentle,

is our Lord in heaven above;

and he leads his children on

to the place where he is gone.