Impossible to miss in any mall, grocery store, elevator, or voice mail system, Christmas music is as ubiquitous as the snow of the season. I have yet to walk into a store this Christmas season that wasn’t playing, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” The song and the tune are familiar to many: “With kids jingle belling, and everyone telling you, ‘Be of good cheer’—it’s the most wonderful time of the year!” With this music all around, who wouldn’t begin to hum along and get caught up in the uplift that can be the holiday season.

And yet, for many this season is anything but wonderful. In fact, the music simply sounds out of tune or reinforces dissonant chords because of the memories, emotions, and experiences now associated with this season. Families in San Bernardino feel the emptiness of loss, the hemorrhage of violence, and the undertow of grief as a result of two shooters. Events like these, and those that have occurred around the world, will mark Christmas seasons with the stains of tears. There are many who also grieve in this season because of the loss of loved ones—not from gun violence—but from the violence of a body turned against itself through cancer or some other debilitating or destructive disease. For them, Christmas reminds them of yet another empty chair. Others experience a numbing loneliness, disappointed expectations, ruptured relationships, and rejections that twist and distort the joy of the season into a garish spectacle. Instead of uplifting them in celebration, the most wonderful time of the year can seem a cruel mockery.

For all of these, and many others, the Christmas season seems more like the opening verse of Christina Rossetti’s haunting Christmas poem, “In the Bleak Midwinter.”

In the bleak midwinter, frost wind made moan,

earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone.

All the excitement, anticipation, and beauty of the season, is frozen by pain, isolation, and grief. Instead of singing songs of joy, a bitter moan emanates like the cold, frost-bitten wind.

Yet, according the Christian gospel into this world—the world of the bleak midwinter—God arrived. Not sheltered from grief or pain, God descended into a world where poverty, violence, and grief were a daily part of God’s human existence. Joseph and Mary, barely teenagers, were poor, and Mary gave birth in a dirty barn. Herod used his power to slaughter all the male children who were in Bethlehem under the age of two. Shepherds still slept on grassy hills, their nomadic home. John the Baptist would be beheaded. And God who Christians believe was the man Jesus would experience rejection and eventually die a criminal’s death with only a few grieving women remaining at his side. The old hymn, “Out of the Ivory Palaces” said it well:

Out of the ivory palaces, into a world of woe,

Only His great, eternal love, made my Savior go.

Into this world—the world of bleak midwinters—God arrives. God arrives in the midst of pain and suffering, doubt and disappointment, longing and loneliness coming alongside of even this kind of human experience because of “great, eternal love.” The Gospel of John explores the mystery of a God did not stay removed from humanity, or from human sufferings, but as the Word made flesh came and dwelt among us. For those who find the Christmas season far from the most wonderful time of the year, may Immanuel, God with us—even in the bleakest midwinter—be sweet consolation.

And for all who celebrate this Season as the most wonderful time of the year demonstrate its wonder, its beauty, its joy and celebration, by reaching out to those in bleak midwinter. As the Rossetti poem offers: doing our part, giving our all, sharing our heart.

Margaret Manning Shull is a member of the speaking and writing team at Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Bellingham, Washington.