Humbug! ... ?

Just when you thought trimmings, tinsel and turkey had gone away for another year, this piece drags out that Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol.  Often at Christmas time I look again at this book, reflecting like Scrooge on my own past Christmases.   It’s also time – as I touched on in my last post here - to peruse some notes I’d collected a few years ago on the original significance of some of our seasonal traditions. 

It’s a chance to consider what Christmas is and what it is not; and also – least we cast out baby with bathwater – what it “isn’t not”.  In pre-Christian times most cultures had a mid-winter festival, to brighten up the darkest season of the year and to look forward to the return of light, warmth and growth.  Some of the familiar trappings of Christmas are rooted in these festivals.  We might prefer to cast aside these superstitions as examples of what the Advent collect calls the ‘works of darkness’, but we can’t deny the truth of God’s love for us from one year to the next, from time immemorial.  Whether we continue to grow food for ourselves in gardens or allotments, or rely on commerce and the supermarket shelves, it’s important to remember that provision for our practical needs is just as much part of God’s love for us as His provision for our redemption from the effects of sin through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

My original outline for this article included an allusion to the Roman god Janus, after whom January is named; he had two faces, one to look forward and one to look back.  Then I heard a talk in which came the idea of seeing the past as a foundation for the future.  So now I feel doubly justified in summarising all this reflection of things historical with a forward-looking exhortation.

Lent will all too soon be upon us; it’s the Church’s second – and most prominent – penitential season.  If you can bear it, I suggest that, before Lent begins, we consider one little detail of A Christmas Carol.  Before he met any of the ghosts, Scrooge was approached by a gentleman raising money ‘to make some slight provision for the poor and destitute’.  Scrooge’s response was to argue for the work of prisons, workhouses and the treadmill.  He was confronted by the challenge that many would rather die than go there.  In response he suggested, ‘then they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.’  It was a tidy and most practical response, but totally uncompassionate, which was the very point of Dickens’ story.

Before too much of our new year has elapsed, let’s consider whether any of Scrooge’s blatantly outrageous philosophies may still be lurking below the surface of our own consciences.  If we examine what we are now in the light of what we recall from our past lives of God’s practical provision for our needs, we might find a new focus that enables us to see whether there is some way in the future that we can respond to His love by caring for others.

I’m reminded of some words from the service of Holy Communion in the Book of Common Prayer.  When I first heard them, I thought them just another prayer; only later did I come to recognise them as straight from the Bible:  “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.” (Matt. 5:16 - KJV).  If you haven’t made one already, they make an excellent New Year’s Resolution.

Aftermath

With the festive celebrations over, it’s time to clear Christmas away and look ahead to 2017.  One of the decisions to make as you do so is what to do with all those cards.  Not that many years ago, I used to analyse mine, sorting them into three piles.

In the first section were the ‘true’ Christmas cards, with picture of angels, babe-in-the-manger, shepherds and wise men, however characterised and simplified.  Next were those with traditional, mostly Dickensian, themes: the carriage and horses, candles, Christmas trees and bells, people in top hats and crinolines going to the church across the snow ... you know the sort.  Last of all were the ‘nothing to do with it’ cards, bearing robins, children dancing, cartoon figures carrying parcels, partridges in pear trees, etc.

In those days, I would mark down those so-called ‘Christian’ friends who had sent anything but ‘true’ cards.  But was I right to do so?

Many of the symbols in the ‘nothing to do with it’ pile, the holly and ivy, the mistletoe and the burning Yule log and the rest, - yes even Father Christmas - have been part of 'Christmas' since before Christmas began.  For millennia, there has been a celebration in the middle of winter for many reasons that have been recorded and explored in far worthier places than this blog. 

It is widely accepted that early Christians in Rome adopted December 25 as Christmas only to supersede a pagan Roman festival, Saturnalia, scheduled at that time.  One commentary suggests that those shepherds to whom the angels told this wonderful news (Luke 2:8-20) wouldn’t have been on the hillside with their sheep in the middle of winter.  In winter, sheep would graze more in the daytime than during the cold middle eastern nights.  Pasturing of flocks at night indicates that this was a warmer season so it’s quite likely that Jesus was actually born at another time of year, making the whole concept of snow and winter as the background to the story completely false.

And is it right to condemn the Victorian theme?  We shouldn’t forget that Victoria's own parents were German; her mother, like Albert’s parents, was from Saxe Coburg and her father only the third generation of the Hanoverians to be born in England.  Much for which her consort Prince Albert is generally blamed was no more than their looking back to how their family had celebrated in the past.  We do the same when we take up our rose-tinted glasses and reminisce about the Christmases of our own childhood.

In my last blog, I mentioned Peter’s visit to Cornelius.  Just before he was taken to him, Peter had received a vision from God in which he was offered many things to eat that were considered ‘unclean’.  A voice told him, “Don’t call anything impure that God has made clean.” (Acts 10:9-16).  The same concept applies here, whether we are considering the robins and holly or the fir trees and Father Christmas.  God made them all – perfectly – and, whether they represent Christmas or not, we are not to condemn them.

But if we strip all these familiar trappings away from what we understand as Christmas, what are we left with?  Many years ago, I discovered words that I think sum it up beautifully:

“And is it true ...

A baby in an ox’s stall?

The maker of the stars and sea

Become a child on earth for me? ...

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.”

from “Christmas” by John Betjeman (published in 1954)

When you clear away your Christmas cards this year, look once more at those illustrations, and the variety of their presentation and content and remember that all these things were made by God for us to enjoy.  Think fondly of the thoughts expressed by the senders of them ... and then recycle them gladly.