Cure Christmas Depressions Series

Love Cures Christmas Depressions

Depression can overcome anyone at any time. Christmas and New Year's eve are some of the worst times. But if we turn to the love of Jesus, that is a cure that works in any season for every conceivable reason. And God's love is so abundant, so truthful, so freely given we Christians can share this love to all who may feel down and out.

After tossing and turning at night, have you ever awoken agitated, discouraged, or depressed? Right from the get-go, does your personal situation seem to have the weight of the world pressing down on you with tons of suffering and hurt feelings? Maybe that's because something you had done wrong—or it was something you know you should have done differently. Possibly you were regretting something you should have done but didn't.

Is there a little voice bouncing around in your head demeaning you? Does it say you are bad, stupid, or a mean person? Or just, “no one loves me.” And, if that voice is saying you are no good at all, what is it telling you to do? Cuss, steal, slander, fight, or be mean to someone else—or maybe worse, is that voice telling you to kill yourself?

In 2018, nine people in Alabama prisons—some in solitary confinement and some on death row died by suicide. The suicide rate in Alabama prisons is one of the highest in the country. Recently, within a span of two weeks, two Alabama prisoners were stabbed to death and three others injured in three separate incidents.

The state of violence in Alabama prisons is worsened by overcrowding and its, seemingly, under-budgeted and understaffed. Is it true that “Everyone inside the prison walls, staff and the incarcerated, are exposed to constant risks of threats and violence?” True yes, but yet, it is far worse outside the prison walls. Unchecked and untreated depression is like a cancer that eats away at a person's soul.

Outside the prison, in “Freedom Land,” there are lots of problems as well. In the general USA population, nearly 30,000 people commit suicide each year, 14 per 100,000. Of course, the rate of unsuccessful suicide attempts is much higher—so much so that there is an estimated one attempted suicide per minute. The hatefulness extrudes from the television from many sources. You have politicians telling their audiences to get in the face of people that don't agree with their personal views. They say, “Run them out of restaurants, stores or anywhere you see them. We have all seen the videos of Antifa mobs breaking windows, throwing rocks and causing all kinds of hate behind their cowardly masks and black-hoodie uniforms.

Depression can strike anyone at any time. Even the famous persons of today and yesteryear. Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, and Tennessee Williams are renown writers and poets who suffered from this form of affliction.

Born early in the 19th century, Edgar Allan Poe's undiagnosed mood swings were symptomatic of bipolar depression which contributes to alcoholism, drug use, and other self-destructive behaviors. Edgar exhibited many of these symptoms. Trauma can cause mood disorders. Poe was orphaned at a young age. He was also considered an alcoholic, likely the cause of his untimely death at the age of 40. When his beloved foster mother died in 1829, he wrote perhaps one of his most famous poems about depression, “Alone.”

Alone by Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood, I have not been

Like others, were-I have not seen

As others, saw-I could not bring

My passions from a common spring-

From the same source, I have not taken

My sorrow-I could not awaken

My heart to joy at the same tone-

And all I lov'd-I lov'd alone-

Then-in my childhood-in the dawn

Of a most stormy life was drawn

From ev'ry depth of good and ill

The mystery which binds me still-

From the torrent, or the fountain-

From the red cliff of the mountain-

From the sun that 'round me roll'd

In its autumn tint of gold-

From the lightning in the sky

As it passed me flying by-

From the thunder, and the storm-

And the cloud that took the form

(When the rest of Heaven was blue)

Of a demon in my view-

That poem illustrates the deepest depths of depression's loneliness that causes many people to feel separated from others.

The list of modern day entertainers who endures or endured mental depression is seemingly endless. Halle Berry, an American actress and former fashion model who won an Academy Award for best actress. She was first African-American woman to win the honor. Then there is the beautiful Katy Perry, an American award-winning recording artist, philanthropist, and actress from California. She speaks candidly about her battles with depression and alcohol and even admitted that she has thought about suicide.