Just what is it about Christmas?

"I don't bother with Christmas these days - it's just for the children, after all, isn't it?" - how often have you heard that?  Countless times, I'll warrant.  And is it true? (I'll come back to that question later.)  What do people mean when they ask it, though?  I suggest that they're really saying that all the razzamataz of the 'High Street Christmas" is what they are rejecting: the special food, that only comes out once a year, like dates, nuts, crystalized fruits, the little bacon/sausage bundles and plum pudding; and the toys that seem to grow more intricate and more expensive with each year that passes, and with an equal and opposite progression in their reliability, too.  And they stop giving Christmas cards, too, because it costs far more now to post them - even second class - than the cost of the card.

So, "I don't bother with Christmas these days."  And what about that other claim, "it's just for the children, isn't it?"  Well, yes, certainly some aspects, the toys, and some of the carols too, are aimed at children.  I for one can't precisely remember when I last unpacked a Christmas present and discovered a toy.  And as one's own children grow up, one's interest in child-focussed celebrations wanes.  Then along come the grandchildren, whose lifestyle is far from one's own.  Now, you might think that they bring with them a replenishment of the 'children' aspect of Christmas, but by the time we are grandparents, time has moved on, and what we enjoyed with our own children is no longer fashionable, or even, perhaps, available.  To a certain extent the grandchildren, dear souls though they are, are a distinct intrusion into the quieter lifestyle that has become our own.

Christmas, then, is better without the children, for whom we once thought it was intended.  What are we to do with it?  Can we ignore it, totally?  No, of course not.  For one thing the culture of the whole nation is geared not only to having Christmas and Boxing Days off work, but also as much of the ensuing fortnight as the chiefs of industry and commerce will allow.  We're not at work, but we're not bothering with Christmas, so shall we go off somewhere for a holiday?  Anywhere close and affordable (if there is anywhere like that in a recession) isn't exactly having holiday weather, so unless we spend an absolute fortune (that we haven't got) that's not on the cards either.

One more thing that we can't do is to roll back the years, to the great times we had in our own childhood - to the times when Christmas really was for the children - or so we thought.  Someone asked me the other day to think back to one of the greatest parties I could remember; after just a little thought, my mind went back to when I was about five, to a Christmas spent around my grandparents' table, in a cottage festooned with paper streamers, and great paper bells hanging from the beams.  The company consisted of my parents and me, my grandparents, and their only other surviving child, along with her husband and daughter: a nice even gathering of eight, who played games in twos or fours, opened presents seemingly without number, and ate the food that the three family units had undoubtedly clubbed together to provide.  The men smoked their pipes without restriction, and the ladies sipped the port or sherry that was reserved for this occasion, and we children were blissfully unaware whether or not we got under everybody's feet, or were a nuisance, because in the spirit of the day we wouldn't have been told off, even if we had been.

Was this what Christmas was all about?  If so, then there's little wonder that we 'don't bother with Christmas these days.'  Times have changed, but our idea of Christmas hasn't.  It's stuck in the past. 

What of the 'real' Christmas, though?  I listened tonight to some carols.  Most of them were old favourites, many dating from the Victorian era, but not all by far.  As the familiar words of each one told its particular aspect of the tale - the couple looking for somewhere to stay because the town was crowded on account of the census; the angels appearing with their good news for the shepherds; the great trek performed by the wise men with their precious gifts; and the great significance of this baby born in the humble surroundings of a stable - the words echoed in my mind and heart, not taking me back to my childhood, or to later times when I might have sung them in a choir, but back centuries beyond any personal recollection to the one time in the history of the world when God Himself appeared on earth in human form, with the express purpose of rescuing mankind from the mess that he had made of his world ... and continues so to do.

In the third line of this article I asked 'and is it true?' and said I'd come back to that question.  As it appeared, it referred to the matter of Christmas being for the children, but that wasn't exactly what I meant, hence coming back to it now.  When I hear that question, 'and is it true?' I'm reminded of a poem I first heard about thirty years ago (although it is at least twice as old) by John Betjeman:

"And is it true? and is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?

And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine."

These are the last three, and to my mind the most poignant, of eight. If you have time this Christmas day, read all eight here.  Like my response to 'your greatest party', they take one's mind back to the familiar Christmasses of yesteryear, but also explain, as I've tried to indicate here, that there is a greater significance to Christmas than anything we can buy, send, imagine, conjour up or cobble together.  There is a 'real' meaning to it that will outlast anyone and everyone's memory - the eternal truth of Immanuel - God with us.

I wish a truly Blessed Christmas to all my readers.

Begotten, not Created

I can picture the woman now: I think she was a character in a TV play many years ago. She said, in a cockney accent, "Don't ought to be allowed, all that begettin'; 'tain't natch'ral." She was referring to the opening verses of St. Matthew's gospel. Although, of course, it is natural, the most natural thing in the world, until recent years the whole question of procreation was taboo in polite society. You just didn’t talk about such things, so why should they appear as a long list at the very start of the New Testament?

In common with many others, over the last decade or so I've been tracing my family history. In so doing, I have realised one possible reason for these Biblical genealogies. In the course of my researches I have made contact with a number of cousins, many of whom, in addition to being distantly related to me, are distantly related to each other, and also live thousands of miles apart. What is it that links us all?

All of my findings are faithfully recorded in a computer program, a database which holds the key dates and relationships of almost 3,000 individuals, some stretching back several centuries. Many times I've tried to show on one sheet of paper the linkage, over six or seven generations, between my distant cousins and myself: to see, if you like, how we all hang together. I soon discovered that it needed to be a very large piece of paper if all the names and dates were to be read.

This effort was in response to a desire to bring these names to life. Although in one sense the people named were quite real, having sent me an e-mail or Christmas card, yet in a strange way they were no more than business contacts, or fellow townspeople. Until I had spanned the generations and seen those links, they didn’t have that special feel: that they belonged to me; that they were part of my family.

I suspect that Matthew, as he wrote his Gospel for Jewish readers, felt a similar need to explain that Jesus was not just a character in another historic epic.  He needed to demonstrate Jesus’ roots as one from the family of Israel, part of their own history and tradition, as well as being divinely conceived to be the means of God;s redemptive plan.

Just as my cousins are special to me, so Jesus is special to us all, as individuals, and we to Him.  In his letter to the Galatians, Paul says that we are all children of God; heirs with (and so spiritual brothers of) Christ (Gal. 3:26-29.)  While I have to resort to e-mails and letters to communicate with my faraway cousins, we can all be assured of Jesus’ presence with us – not just at Christmas time, but always – in the form of the Holy Spirit that He has placed in our hearts.

Heaven Alongside

The Girton Interchange at the top of the M11 is a junction the like of which I’ve seen nowhere else in ten years of professional driving.  While two lanes of northbound traffic pass unhindered, scarcely noticing the change from M11 to A14, just feet away on the other side of the barrier an exciting transition is happening, at speeds of up to 60 mph.  Motorway traffic slowing down to turn east changes place with westbound A14 traffic accelerating to follow their route north.  It sounds quite dangerous, but all the drivers seem to realise that in those few hundred yards every vehicle will be swapping sides, and it all seems to work out quite smoothly.

If you are wondering what this has to do with Christmas and the Incarnation, I invite you to check out the relevant verses, which are these:  Luke 2:9, John 1:5, John 3:4 and Acts 1:9-11.

When the A14 route was created, it involved very little new construction, and in large part consisted of re-numbering and upgrading existing roads.  This junction involves negotiating a complex manoeuvre simply to stay on the same route, and drivers using it for the first time are a little cautious, wondering just where all the traffic around them is going. 

So imagine poor country folk, doing what they’ve done every winter night for centuries: looking after their animals on the hillside.  All of a sudden they are surrounded by shining lights, heavenly voices and the sweetest music they’ve heard in their lives.  Little wonder that they were terrified.  At the start of John’s Gospel, the evangelist gives an overview of Jesus’ mission on earth.  It is characteristic of virtually all of the Gospel story that His teaching seemed completely opposite to the accepted ways of the world.  His sayings were often confusing to those who heard them; the comment by Nicodemus is only one example of many.

Some 17 miles after Girton, the A14 road approaches Huntingdon, and by now drivers have got used to the volume of traffic, which includes many heavy lorries and is often as great as on a three-lane motorway.  No one knows which of the adjacent vehicles is heading for the midlands and which for the north, until a junction turns the A14 traffic off to the west again, leaving the remainder to join the A1(M).  It’s something of a surprise if you’re not expecting it.

After three years, and the upheaval that the death - and then the resurrection - of their supernatural friend had inflicted on what had become a new way of life, the disciples must have been absolutely flabberghasted when, in the middle of talking with them about the coming Spirit ... suddenly he was with them no longer, but instead two men in white, explaining that he’d been taken up into heaven!

 

And one day He’ll return – let us renew our resolve this advent to be ready, whenever that may be.