Christmas; Cosy or Challenging?

“Christmas is for the children isn’t it?”

“By Boxing Day it’s all over.”

“With the credit crunch I can’t afford to do Christmas this year”

“I really don’t like Christmas”

These are some of the sentiments that we hear at this time of year. Apparently, 25% of the population dreads Christmas – it can be a lonely and sad time loaded with expectations that aren’t fulfilled. Christmas day is certainly one of the busiest days for the Samaritans. Surely we have missed something fundamental here? What has gone wrong with how we keep the feast? God would never have intended this.

I do not believe that Christmas is only, or even mainly, for the children. Christmas is for all of us, the whole world, and the whole of creation. We all need the coming of the Christ Child and he comes to all of us – especially those of us who have less than others and who suffer in any way. That is what God is showing us when He is born in a poor manger and visited by the lowest of the low – the shepherds. So if we have less money than usual this year – or even no money at all - then Christmas is the feast for us. We can and must learn to celebrate without expensive presents and without draining the family’s purse for the next 6 months. Christmas is about releasing us from debt, not dragging us into greater debt. We may need to re-learn how to be together with family and friends, or how to live with our loneliness. We may need to learn how to make smaller gifts with love and not to measure love by the size of the gift. We may need to find a deeper meaning in the Christmas story that God came to be with us.

In St Matthew’s gospel the baby Jesus is called “Emmanuel” which means “God-with-us”. He is with us in taking on our humanity. He is with us in human vulnerability lying in a manger. He is with us through the whole of our life’s experience for better and worse. He will be with us in death on Good Friday, and beyond it in glory at Easter. He is with us for all time as the resurrected Christ through the Holy Spirit. The message of Christmas speaks right into those of us who are having a hard time or who are lonely, or worried, or sick, or in any sort of pain. If we are struggling with the trappings of a commercial or social Christmas we do not have to run away from Christmas – just learn to hear what it is really about.

If we come to trust in a God who is with us in a real sense day by day, then the message of Christmas is for all of us every day of the year and there is no part of our experience that is beyond God’s reach or that he doesn’t care about.

What is it then to believe that divine Love is incarnate in a world filled with hatred and fear? What does it mean to sing of peace and hope while we are aware of the unbearable harsh reality in which many people live – in Zimbabwe, Mumbai, Athens, Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel/Palestine, Sudan, and so many other places? What does Christmas mean when we are faced with threats of attack across the world?

If Christmas means anything at all, it means that when we look for God we find him in the depths of human experience for he is in his very nature God-with-us. Seeking God, we will find him most specially in the ruined places of the world and of our hearts. God’s ancient promise remains: “I will seek out the lost and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak” (Ezekiel 34.16). God seeks us out and does not let us go – even to the point of becoming human; and we will find him in our places of destitution and fear, and in our human fragility. It is into these places most of all that he comes with his peace and his hope – the peace of God that passes human understanding.

And for us? If we stand around the manger to sing carols and make Christmas into our private cosy domestic affair; if we keep the feast by pouring money at it, if we distance ourselves from those whose lives today are torn apart, then the carols we sing and the message we will tell the world is empty indeed.  Christmas is about God intimately present with all his creation. It is risky, ground-breaking, for some even scandalous and it will not be tamed into a children’s party.

‘Peace on earth, goodwill to all’ is a message of vision, hope, and change, not just for children and not just for one day of the year. It is the message from God who is most deeply and intimately with each one of us. He lived it and we must do so too.

However you mark Christmas in your household, whether you love it as a festival or loath its external trappings, may God be with you in all your doings and may you receive his peace and blessing for you.              

Felicity.