What Christmas are you looking for this year?

It’s Christmas time when the churches are bedecked with tinsel on Christmas Trees, oranges with cloves poking from every side and candles adorning, and a myriad of different Carol services or midnight Mass’. It is one of the special times of the year when people do ‘flock’ to the church.

Isn’t it weddings, deaths, Easter and Christmas that Churches are full?

The Church might have elected to consider asking people to invite their friends to Church on this very special occasion. “Bring a friend!” they might say.  ….will they come to the following Sunday as well?

Might I ask a question : why?

Is it to give them a spectacle, a special service of delight, one full of tradition?

I wonder whether we will use the story from the Gospel according to Matthew where Joseph and Mary flee from Bethlehem on a donkey to Egypt following the visitation of the Magi, or the Gospel of Luke where the couple arrive from Nazareth to Bethlehem and meet with the Shepherds: or will it be a combination of the two? You might wish to compare and contrast the two versions.

I wonder whether the story may be brought up to date from the perspective of refugees escaping from a land? How would Mary and Joseph cope with getting to cross the border between foreign lands today? The implications of not allowing free movement might have had a significant impact on their escape to Egypt. But would the Gospel message have changed if that were so?

And I think that is the question we might wish to ponder on as we prepare for Christmas this year.

Do we wish to have yet another Christmas, like any other, or seriously wonder what the message is to us today?

We have a lass, Mary, probably in her early teens, betrothed to an older man. He wasn’t a man of the church, not a Rabbi, but one who clearly was concerned for this young maiden. He elects not to divorce her, but to accept the probable public disgrace due to her condition with child. The child is born to a couple supposedly not yet married. Surely this has relevancy to today? What does this say to those who might judge society with its different ways from yesteryear?

They eventually find a place in Bethlehem, if we follow Luke’s depiction, as the place is packed due to a political decision to raise possibly additional funds through a Census. The baby is not born in a Royal abode, but amidst squalor. The animals the Jews used to work their fields were next door neighbours to Christ. Our houses this year, possibly with a few presents scattered across the floor, may not resemble where our faith begins. Many people still live in squalor. We may think of those refugees, now forgotten in the news, from Central America, existing in camps in the southern states of the USA; the Kurds fleeing from their homeland, originally promised by the Europeans many decades ago, following a violent advance by a neighbouring country purportedly seeking peace; the migrants from Africa denied entry to some Southern European countries and even England.

Possibly the Christmas message this year is of one of relevancy. It isn’t just a story that is 2 millenia old, but is equally valid today. The story of Christmas isn’t merely of a baby born in a stable, however you define that building, but one of love to us all. Jesus is one who brings love and peace to everyone: for those who live in squalor, for those on the run, for those without anything, and for those with. Jesus understands what it is like. Hence the term ‘incarnational’ – God being with us.

I’m not sure the early days of Jesus were that comfortable: what they did bring was hope. Hope that we can hold on to. God’s love is to us all. 

So whoever we meet this year, perhaps rather than focus upon the shepherds looking coy, or the angelic nature of the ‘angels’ we might see how the story of Christ’s birth is as valid today as it has always been.

Have a blessed Christmas!