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.