Preparing For Christmas

We’re now reaching the last weekend before Christmas. And as with every single year in the past, the newspapers will be sure to find someone - usually a clergyman, to voice the complaint that the whole season has become nothing more than an orgy of spending and consumption, and to declare that they intend to 'drop out' and give the money they save to people who need it.

With equal certainty, this will then be matched by another voice, condemning such a killjoy attitude and insisting that we should join in the full festivities, grateful that even such a secular world as ours still gives so much to a major Christmas festival.

This little ritual is a regular occurrence because both voices strike a chord. Sometimes it really does seem as though Christmas Day, when it comes, is more of a whimper than a bang, and all the preparation and expenditure ends in a 'celebration' that for a lot of people doesn't amount to much more than a day in front of the telly, watching special editions of programmes they would have watched anyway.

At the same time, it's deeply built into human beings that from time to time they should push the boat out, and organise occasions when the economical gives way to the extravagant. To refuse ever to do this is not to remain sensible in the face of general foolishness, but to cast ourselves in the part of Scrooge.

It might seem that the answer lies in striking a balance, but the matter goes deeper than this. To know how and where to strike that balance, we need to experience a genuine sense of celebration; we need to know what the point of all the activity is, and what gives it meaning.

Otherwise, Christmas really is just going through expensive, if not time honoured motions, a case of perfectly pointless 'shop till you drop.'

Perhaps this Christmas season, amidst the financial woes of the world, we will think a bit less of the commercial and begin to focus more on our greatest and most meaningful gifts - family, friends, and the greatest gift of all - the one that arrived in a grotty barn on a star filled night.

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Denying Christmas

Without fail, every Christmas, the same tired old chestnuts are given an airing. There are the complaints about the commercialisation of the Festival - which seem to me to be as futile as bemoaning the coldness of ice. The modern Christmas we both celebrate and deny is as much an invention of the industrial revolution as the steam engine.

And there are the secularists who shout to anyone who will listen that Christmas is a fraud. December 25th was not Christ’s birthday. Christians pilfered the winter solstice from the pagans and turned it into the festival of the Nativity. Clearly, there's some truth to this. What the old religion imperfectly glimpsed, Christianity brought into the full light of day. Now Christmas has become embroiled in the political correctness debacle. Even the Red Cross has banned Christmas cards from their catalogues for fear their neutrality might be compromised.

But cries of political correctness can’t undermine the true meaning of Christmas, because all the popular imagery of the greetings card - star, stable, shepherds - play a quite minor if evocative role in the story. Indeed, historians tell us that for the first three or four centuries of the Church’s existence, there was no Christmas Day. Apparently, the earliest Christians found no need to assign a fictitious date to Christ’s birth in order to anchor the incarnation within the calendar. They celebrated Christmas and Easter every time they met.

Christmas is about the arrival of the Messiah, and there’s an incident in the Gospel where the disciples of John the Baptist come to ask Jesus whether or not he is the Messiah. In his reply, Jesus never even mentions the circumstances of his birth.

Instead, He tells them to report to John that the blind see again, the lame walk, the deaf hear, lepers are cleansed and the poor are given good news. Their condition could be transformed by the coming of the Kingdom of God, which Jesus embodies - justice, peace and joy by the power of the Spirit brought within the range of all.

That’s the core theme of Christmas. The poet John Donne wrote, 'I need thy thunder, O God; thy songs no longer suffice me.' The danger is that we may be so mesmerised by the songs of Christmas that we fail to hear the sound of approaching thunder, as the Messiah inspires us to establish justice, peace and joy on the earth.

Think how the burdens of so many wonderful humanitarian agencies, charities, and missions could be greatly eased if this political as well as religious vision of Christmas could be realised.

It's the thunder that gives us vision and strength to reach out and help others in need.

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A Lonely Death

De Adviento, Pasando de la Oscuridad a la Luz

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Our Greatest Gifts

It was just about this time last year when my son made a comment that has stuck with me throughout the year. He was tickled at watching me rather frantically try to balance my Christmas week’s duties. I was endeavouring to juggle in the midst of lousy health, two funerals, a string of home visits, trying to squeeze in the shopping for the food we would cook and deliver on Christmas Day, plus our own Christmas meal. And particularly challenging was an appointment schedule where I was to meet up with a pianist at numerous nursing homes, where we were to sing Christmas carols with the residents.

Unfortunately, the pianist had a proclivity for becoming, er, um, ‘filled with the spirit’ before he came to the nursing homes and he was in more need of the Zimmer frames to get about than the residents. Compounding the situation was the fact that although he was an accomplished musician, his Jack Daniels infused repertoire would begin with Silent Night, but somehow segue into an impromptu rendition of Let Me Entertain You from the musical Gypsy, complete with leg kicks and gyrations!

Willem described the last week of Advent as my week of “überchurch.” Well, I suppose he’s right. It is a week of ‘heavy church’ for us, the clergy. But it’s part of our vows to be there and it’s part of our natural composite which makes us want to serve.

But there are many others who labour so hard during this time of year to make the season of Christmas come to life. From the kindness of their hearts, people come from their busy homes and their demanding jobs to decorate the church, wash and iron the fresh altar linens, polish the silver and brass, arrange the flowers and prepare for our celebration of Christ’s birth. All of their labour is to the glory of God.

In many ways, I see the selfless work these kind souls perform as redemptive. It’s reflected in the eloquent squares of crisp white linens, in the purificators, in the gleam of the freshly polished chalice and paten – they speak of a restored human nature, of the rough places levelled and straightened, of all the stains of human life on earth removed in Christ.

The holly and the ivy that adorn the pews promise renewal to the people of God in the depths of Winter. And I believe that these physical things can often speak volumes to the masses of people who will arrive on Christmas Eve but not at other times. It may be that they don’t think much about God during any other time of the year. But it may just be that this one time, those loving touches of colour added by a dedicated team of ‘miracle makers’ could awaken something within them – something that helps them begin to hear with their inner ear.

This all came to mind this evening as I stood in the cemetery, surrounded by the solstice dark. I’ve just returned from hospital in Eastbourne where a friend lingers in the balance between death and life. He has been in a coma for the past three days. His wife refuses to leave his side.

As Mr Piddles did his reconnaissance check around the perimeter of the cemetery, in search of UFO’s (unidentified furry objects), I took the opportunity to look up at the bright constellations.

I thought about the tragic events that occurred in Newtown Connecticut and the families whose lives will never be the same. I thought about the adults who gave their lives for the children and how an entire community will never be the same as a consequence of a nation exercising their rights. And I thought about the six-year-old who just days later, carried his parent's gun with him to school, according to the child, 'at the suggestion of his parents.' I prayed that these events will now be the turning point for change. 

And I focused my thoughts on the countless children whose lives never become part of a media frenzy - those who are trafficked, sold, abused, tortured, and disposed of, with as little thought as the flick of a cigarette ash.  I prayed that their lives receive just a trace of attention and action.  

And then I gave thanks to God for all that is good in our lives and for the fact that we are connected with one another in a bond that cannot be severed, and that we can weep together, just as we can also rejoice.

Father Bill Haymaker +

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Postat căci Tata Bill 
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