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.