For those navigating Christmas after suicide loss, the holiday season arrives with its familiar fanfare whether we’re ready or not. For those of us who have lost someone to suicide, Christmas can feel like an assault rather than a celebration. The world insists on joy at precisely the moment when grief feels heaviest, when the absence of the person we love echoes loudest in the silence beneath all that cheerful noise.
When Traditions Become Painful
Every family has their Christmas rituals, those treasured traditions passed down through generations or created with intention over the years. After suicide loss, these once-comforting customs can become sources of pain. The empty chair at Christmas dinner. The stocking that shouldn’t be hung but somehow must be. The ornaments that carry memories too heavy to hold.
That first Christmas after we lost our son John, my wife and I couldn’t bring ourselves to get a tree. It felt impossible to go through the motions of normalcy when our world had shattered. But when our daughter came home from college on December 23rd, she was upset that we’d broken this family tradition. I found myself scrambling to one of the last tree lots in town. What I brought home was a sparse, lopsided thing, a real Charlie Brown tree. Yet somehow, in its imperfection, it was exactly right for that broken season.
The tradition of hanging stockings has remained our most complicated ritual. We still hang John’s stocking by the fireplace each year. Inside, we place a new angel ornament, a small gesture that acknowledges both his absence and his continued place in our family. It hurts. Every single year, it hurts. But the alternative, pretending he never existed, would hurt more.
The Challenge to Faith
For those who find meaning in the religious aspects of Christmas, suicide loss can shake faith to its foundations. We celebrate a story of divine intervention, of angels appearing to shepherds, of miraculous birth and salvation. Where was the divine intervention for our loved one? Where was their guardian angel?
I used to love “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The story of George Bailey standing on that bridge, contemplating suicide, only to be saved by his guardian angel Clarence, it was heartwarming. After John’s death, I couldn’t watch it the same way. The movie that once filled me with hope now posed a question I couldn’t answer: where was my son’s guardian angel? Why didn’t someone appear to pull him back from that edge?
This wrestling with faith is normal, even necessary. The deeper meaning of Christmas extends beyond the birth story itself. It speaks to hope in darkness, to light entering a broken world, to the possibility of redemption and renewal. But accessing that meaning when you’re overwhelmed with grief takes time. There is no timeline for when, or if, these spiritual dimensions of Christmas will feel comforting again.
A Holiday Built on Togetherness
Christmas is family-oriented, which makes the absence of your loved one impossible to ignore. Every commercial, every movie, every song emphasizes being together, gathering around the tree, sharing joy with those you love. When someone is missing, especially when they’re missing because they died by suicide, the pain of that absence intensifies with every reminder of what holidays are “supposed” to be.
The Goo Goo Dolls captured something essential in their song “Better Days”: “And you asked me what I want this year, and I try to make this kind and clear, just a chance that maybe we’ll find better days. ‘Cause I don’t need boxes wrapped in bows, I just want better days.”
After suicide loss, the gift you want most is the one you cannot have. No amount of presents under the tree, no matter how thoughtfully chosen, can fill the void. You don’t want a perfect Christmas morning. You want your person back. You want the chance to find better days together, the chance that was taken away.
The Relentless Cheer
Then there’s the inescapable soundtrack of the season. Christmas music plays in every store, every restaurant, every commercial break. Songs about joy and peace and family togetherness become a form of torture when your heart is breaking. You can’t escape it. Even if you avoid stores and turn off the radio, it finds you.
The same goes for the endless parade of cheerful Christmas movies on television. Everyone finds love. Families reunite. Miracles happen. Every conflict resolves with a bow on top. When you’re grieving, these stories don’t offer comfort or escape. They feel like a cruel mockery of your reality, a reminder of the happy ending your family will never get.
Not feeling merry during the “most wonderful time of the year” can bring its own layer of guilt and isolation. Everyone around you seems to be celebrating while you’re just trying to survive.
The New Meaning of Black Friday
Black Friday takes on a different significance after suicide loss. The idea of joining crowds at the mall, of fighting through masses of cheerful shoppers hunting for the perfect gift, becomes unthinkable. The energy, the noise, the forced festivity of it all stands in such stark contrast to the darkness of your grief.
Shopping for presents when the person you most want to shop for is gone requires a strength many of us don’t have, especially in those early years. It’s okay to order online. It’s okay to skip gift-giving altogether. It’s okay to do Christmas differently when the old way is simply too painful.
When Family Members Grieve Differently
One of the most challenging aspects of navigating Christmas after suicide loss is recognizing that everyone in the family is grieving differently. Your spouse may need to maintain traditions while you need to abandon them. Your children may want to celebrate while you want to hide. One sibling might find comfort in gathering together while another needs space and solitude.
There’s no right way to grieve, which means there’s no right way to handle Christmas while grieving. This can create tension and misunderstanding within families at a time when everyone is already emotionally raw. The parent who wants to skip Christmas entirely may hurt the child who desperately needs some sense of normalcy. The spouse who fills the house with decorations may feel like they’re betraying their partner who can barely get out of bed.
Communication becomes essential, even when talking is the last thing any of you wants to do. Being honest about what you need, and being willing to accept that others need something different, can help navigate these difficult waters. Sometimes the best you can do is compromise: the tree goes up, but it’s smaller. You gather for dinner, but you skip church. You hang the stockings, but you give each other permission to cry.
The Alliance of Hope for Suicide Loss Survivors provides insights into how grief affects different family members uniquely, helping families understand and support each other through these differences.
Finding New Meaning
The deeper meaning of Christmas, beyond the birth of Christ, beyond the commercialism and tradition, lies in the themes of hope, light in darkness, and love that endures even in the face of loss. After suicide, these themes take on new resonance. You understand darkness in ways you never wanted to. You know what it means to desperately need light, even the smallest glimmer.
Hope for the future may feel impossible in those early Christmases. How can you hope when someone you loved felt so hopeless they ended their life? How can you think about the future when you’re still trapped in the trauma of the past?
But hope, real hope, doesn’t require feeling optimistic. It can be as simple as believing you might survive this. It can be the recognition that you made it through today, and you might make it through tomorrow too. Those better days the Goo Goo Dolls sing about don’t arrive all at once. They come in moments, sometimes just minutes at first, when the weight of grief lifts just enough to let you breathe.
Honoring Those We’ve Lost
Since we cannot have the gift we want most, the return of the person we lost, we must find other ways to keep them present in our lives and in our celebrations. Honoring those we’ve lost to suicide doesn’t mean pretending the holidays aren’t painful. It means finding meaningful ways to acknowledge both their absence and their enduring place in our hearts.
Some families light a special candle. Others share favorite memories before dinner. Some make a donation in their loved one’s name to a suicide prevention organization or mental health charity. Some create new ornaments, or place a special decoration on the tree, or prepare their loved one’s favorite Christmas dish.
The angel ornaments we place in John’s stocking each year serve this purpose for our family. It’s our way of saying he’s still part of our Christmas, still remembered, still loved. It acknowledges the spiritual dimension of our loss while keeping him present in our family traditions.
Our Side of Suicide offers suggestions from other survivors on meaningful ways to honor loved ones during the holiday season, recognizing that each family must find their own path.
Creating New Traditions
After suicide loss, some old traditions may simply be too painful to continue. That’s not failure or betrayal. It’s survival. And it opens space for new traditions that better fit your changed family and your changed reality.
Maybe you volunteer on Christmas Day, finding purpose in serving others who are struggling. Maybe you travel somewhere different, removing yourself from the places saturated with memories. Maybe you have dinner at a different time, or skip it altogether and have breakfast for dinner instead. Maybe you celebrate on a different day entirely, taking the pressure off December 25th.
I decided that after that first difficult Christmas, I would try to do something totally different for the second Christmas. For the next 12 months I worked behind the scenes, designing a Christmas light display unlike anything I had ever done before. I collected complicated lights from across the world, I soldered microprocessors onto circuit boards, I programmed music to make the lights move. I built an animated Christmas light display along with a radio station that broadcast the animated music that the lights danced to. Christmas in Warren was born.
It was my chance to give back to the people who had been there to support us during our darkest days. It was an acknowledgement that there were people who were struggling with their own pain. It was a chance to let people find a moment of peace, joy and light into their lives during the difficult Christmas season. Our house went from the house where the teenager died by suicide, to the Christmas house that hundreds of families gathered each season to see the display. It was a place where we heard laughter and awe from the children and people outside of our house.
In taking a step in a different direction, we were given a gift back. We found the true spirit of Christmas. We got to share hope and light to our community and in the process we got some of it back.
New traditions don’t erase the person you lost. They don’t mean you’re moving on or forgetting. They’re simply acknowledgment that you cannot go back to who you were before, so you must find a way forward as the people you’ve become. Sometimes that forward movement comes from channeling your grief into something that brings light to others. Sometimes healing happens when you create beauty from your pain, when you transform loss into something that gives joy to your community.
Permission to Struggle
If you’re facing Christmas after losing someone to suicide, give yourself permission to struggle. Permission to not be okay. Permission to skip things that are too hard. Permission to leave the party early. Permission to cry when the Christmas music gets to be too much. Permission to turn off the cheerful movies. Permission to stay in bed if that’s what you need.
The world will keep celebrating around you. That’s not wrong of them, and it’s not wrong of you to find that difficult. You’re not required to match their energy or their joy. You’re only required to survive, one moment at a time, one day at a time, one holiday at a time.
Those better days will come, though they won’t be the ones you imagined. They’ll be different. Your family is different now. Your faith may be different. Your traditions will be different. But light does return, even to the darkest winters. Hope, however small, however tentative, does emerge.
Moving Forward Through the Darkness
In that Charlie Brown tree we bought that first Christmas, scraggly and imperfect and nothing like what we’d planned, there was a kind of truth. Sometimes survival looks nothing like success. Sometimes just showing up, just going through the motions, just hanging that stocking one more year, is enough.
Your loved one’s empty place at the table will always hurt. The Christmas you wish you could have will always feel out of reach. But somewhere in the space between the pain of what was and the uncertainty of what will be, there is room for something new. Not better, maybe. Not the same, certainly. But something that lets you honor both your loss and your love, both your grief and your hope for those better days ahead.
That first Christmas may feel impossible. The second might not be much easier. But year by year, moment by moment, you learn to carry your grief alongside whatever small joys you can find. You learn that you can hold your son’s stocking and your daughter’s smile in the same moment. You can feel the absence and the presence simultaneously. You can survive a holiday you never thought you’d have to face.
And in surviving it, in finding whatever small ways work for you to honor the one you lost while living the life you still have, you discover a deeper truth about Christmas: it was never really about the perfect celebration. It was always about love persisting in the face of darkness. And no amount of loss, no matter how devastating, can take away the love that remains.
You Are Not Alone
If you’re reading this while facing your first Christmas after loss, or your tenth, please know that you are not alone in your struggle. Tens of thousands of families are navigating these same painful waters, trying to find their way through a season that has been forever changed.
Support groups provide spaces where you don’t have to explain your grief, where others understand the unique pain of losing someone to suicide. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention connects survivors with local support groups and resources across the country. Online communities like the Alliance of Hope offer 24/7 connection with others who understand your journey.
Healing doesn’t mean forgetting. It doesn’t mean the pain goes away completely. It means learning to carry your loss while still finding moments of peace, connection, and even joy. It means discovering that love endures beyond death, that your bond with your loved one continues even in their absence.
As you navigate this Christmas season, be gentle with yourself. Honor your grief. Hold onto hope, even when it’s just a whisper. And remember that better days, different than you imagined but real nonetheless, are possible. You will find your way through this darkness. One day, one moment, one breath at a time.
The light you create, whether it’s a single candle, an elaborate display, or simply the decision to get out of bed and face another day, matters. It matters to you, it matters to your family, and it matters to your community. In sharing your light, however small it may feel, you become part of the greater light that pushes back against the darkness. You become hope for someone else who desperately needs to know they can survive this too.
This Christmas may be heavy with grief, but it also holds the possibility of connection, meaning, and even moments of peace. You don’t have to choose between honoring your loved one and allowing yourself to experience whatever small joys come your way. You can do both. You can grieve and hope. You can remember and move forward. You can survive, and eventually, you can even find ways to thrive again.
Other Posts You May Also Like
- Moving Beyond Guilt: A Path Toward Healing After Suicide Loss – The holidays often intensify feelings of guilt and the “what ifs” that haunt survivors. This post explores how to work through self-blame and find compassion for yourself during family gatherings and special occasions when grief feels most acute.
- Time After Loss: Finding Your Way Forward – Christmas may bring pressure to “be over it” or “move on.” This post helps you understand that grief doesn’t follow a timeline, especially during milestone moments like holidays, and gives you permission to grieve at your own pace.
- Finding Your People: The Healing Power of Suicide Loss Support Groups – The holidays can be especially isolating. Learn how to find and connect with others who understand the unique pain of suicide loss, both in-person groups and online communities that provide support when you need it most.
- Finding Your Way Through the Holidays: A Guide for Survivors of Suicide Loss – A comprehensive guide to navigating all the difficult aspects of the holiday season after losing someone to suicide, with practical strategies and permission to do holidays differently.
- Self-Care – During the demanding holiday season, taking care of yourself becomes even more critical. Discover practical ways to nurture yourself through this difficult time without guilt, including permission to say no and set boundaries when you need them.
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