From a long-time reader, a Protestant pastor:

…it isn’t the Christmas season if i don’t do a funeral, and there is a bittersweet power to the reaction of families to hearing (since i usually use a calendar stroll like you used in the piece) that their grief is not alien to the season, but an integral and even necessary part of it . . . all of which makes it all right to go back to the house with a tree and decorations and celebrate in, well, due season.