The newspapers have been full of headlines using
Christmas songs, amended to suit the current situation. George Michael’s “Lost
Christmas” and Bing Crosby’s “It’s beginning to look a lot like lockdown”. I
fancy Chris Rea singing “Not driving home for Christmas”. Elvis, of course, who
began the rock and roll revolution had already recorded “Blue Christmas” long
ago.
Christians, of course, have often lamented that the true
meaning of the festival can be lost amidst the ever-increasing number of events
and purchases attached to it. It brings no pleasure to suggest that this year
the process has been reversed definitively. Even for the faithful, celebration
is cut back to a minimum along with travel and family get-togethers.
There is a strong tradition in our carols of peace, and
of silence. “Silent night” is perhaps the most obvious, and it is silent
because it is a holy night, an exceptional time of remembering and valuing
God’s great, ultimate gift of his Son Jesus. Can we recognise the Holy in this
world of confusion and uncertainty? Our true joy at this time is that “with the
poor and mean and lowly, lived on earth our Saviour holy”.
The birth of Jesus was a quiet event, hardly noticed by
the people in the town. The visitors in the Bible are important, representing
ordinary people and people across the world, but the event was very low-key. God’s
way is accomplished in ordinary, or reduced circumstances, integral with normal
human life. The carol Once in royal David’s city underlines this, perhaps using
a deliberate contrast between the leaders of this world and the mass of people
to whom Jesus came, and brings a hush with “How silently, how silently, the
wondrous gift is given; So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his
heaven.”
This Christmas almost all of us are in a position where
our celebration is limited. For some people this will cause pain and anguish
which no amount of reassurance will entirely mitigate, so I don’t say this
lightly. There is a peace in the Christmas story which says that God loves us
so much that he sent his Son (John 3.16) and if we can find the way of
refocussing we can locate within ourselves a fresh trust and hope in the God
who comes to us in all our complexities and suffering. It doesn’t need to be a
Lost Christmas, for the wonderful truth is that in all our need God has come
and found us.
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