I met someone in the week who told me they wish Christmas was over! Being a fairly high church Methodist I told her it’s not Christmas til December 25 and the Christmas season lasts until 2 February! I’m sorry Christmas starts so early these days. I don’t know how you explain to children why Father Christmas appears in November. It’s sad that people will begin to pack it all away on Boxing Day. There are already crème eggs in the Spar round the corner from us. It’s soon over.
I was in the new Harrogate branch of a major supermarket chain which opened this week yesterday and visited the café. At least in this one you order what you want from a real person. In the new Ripon branch of that same major supermarket chain you order what you want punching numbers in a machine. Anyway I sat with a coffee reading the paper, and because I wasn’t holding the cup in my hand and hadn’t for a while a girl came and whisked it away believing I’d finished! It reminded me of a Scarborough guest house we stayed in in the 1970’s. The proprietor watched us eat breakfast like a prison guard. The minute your knife and fork went down he was there clearing the table. Christmas can be like that, gone in a flash, over quickly and then what…
I was at Harrogate Choral Society’s recital of Handel’s Messiah yesterday. Lis sings with them. A full church had a treat. I love to hear the Messiah every year, especially the Christmas bit. It reminds me this event we remember year after year after year is not something that only lasts a few days but it is huge, big, vast, revolutionary, and eternal. Handel includes the prophecy of Isaiah 40 as a reminder to us: “And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together : for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.” You can’t reduce it to a few carols or parties or dinners or once a year greetings. You can’t make it narrower than it is. You will know there was a far right rally in Whitehall yesterday to put Christ back into Christmas. A white British Christ. There’s a counter campaign which uses artwork by Andrew Gadd which depicts the nativity in a bus shelter. Posters with slogans including “Christ has always been in Christmas”, “outsiders welcome”, and “Whatever your story, Christmas starts with Christ”, are on display on bus-stop billboards this weekend.
Let’s not make Christmas – incarnation – too quick, too small, too narrow. Let’s see it as so big – incomprehensible – that God chooses to break into his world as he sees fit.
I know this Christmas time it is very easy to despair in the face of all that has befallen us in the world. It is difficult to remain positive, or optimistic, but ‘the word incarnate’, the Son of God should be our starting point. The incarnation refutes the pessimism of our times, the despondency, the negativity and challenges the truth of the popular narrative of despair. It’s big!
A poem by Alan Boesak, entitled, ‘This is True’, challenges us. Our source of hope is grounded in the incarnation and these are the words of that poem.
It is not true
that creation and the human family
are doomed to destruction and loss. This is true:
For God so loved the world
that He gave his only begotten Son,
that whoever believes in Him,
shall not perish but have everlasting life.
It is not true
that we must accept inhumanity and discrimination,
hunger and poverty, death and destruction. This is true:
I have come that they may have life,
and that abundantly.
It is not true
that violence and hatred should have the last word,
and that war and destruction rule forever. This is true:
Unto us a child is born,
unto us a Son is given,
and the government shall be upon his shoulder,
his name shall be called,
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
the Everlasting, the Prince of Peace.
It is not true
that we are simply victims of the powers of evil
who seek to rule the world— This is true: To me is given authority in heaven and on earth,
and lo I am with you,
even until the end of the world.
How does Christmas come to those in fear, those who are fed up, those who’ve been bereaved, to Ukraine and Gaza, to those with narrow vision and ideas scared of the different, to tired churches, to those who think good news doesn’t last. How does Christmas come to you? Well I like to use John Shea’s marvellous Sharon’s Christmas prayer to help us see we cannot narrow or water down or limit divine excitement…
She was five,
sure of the facts,
and recited them
with slow solemnity
convinced every word
was revelation.
She said
they were so poor
they had only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches
to eat
and they went a long way from home
without getting lost. The lady rode
a donkey, the man walked, and the baby
was inside the lady.
They had to stay in a stable
with an ox and an ass (hee-hee)
but the Three Rich Men found them
because a star lited the roof
Shepherds came and you could
pet the sheep but not feed them.
Then the baby was borned.
And do you know who he was?
Her quarter eyes inflated
to silver dollars.
The baby was God.
And she jumped in the air whirled round, dove into the sofa and buried her head under the cushion which is the only proper response to the Good News of the Incarnation.
Isn’t that great?
Today I’ve had three very different services. Boroughbridge had their carol service this morning, Dallowgill had an Advent communion this afternoon and Bishop Monkton a lovely interactive Christingle tonight. All three were times of pointing us to hope and peace being real in Jesus being about.
Someone asked me the other night what I think the message of Christmas 2025 should be. I wonder whether it is this:
We know, even when life gets us down, that our God loves us and promises to be with us. And this can fill us with joy, even in the midst of our sorrow. The Jesuit writer Henri Nouwen got it right:
“Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. It is a choice based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us.”
Nothing can take God away from us, and so we can always choose joy. We can choose joy knowing that it is deeper and stronger than any surface happiness or sadness that we may find in this world. Joy is our way as Christians of refusing to let the headlines in our world win.
So Joy to the world the Lord is come! Don’t rush the story so it is over, don’t limit its power, don’t narrow it to exclude, don’t stress so much about the season you miss it, and let it abide in you for ever. What do you see and hear, says Jesus? The glory of the Lord has been revealed…
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