I suppose that most of us like our Christmas to be a cosy time, and, for most of us it probably is – although we know well enough that this isn’t so for all too many today. And as we celebrate the birth of Jesus it is worth asking whether he came to promote cosiness. I’m not saying that he was against enjoying the company of friends, family and others in relaxed surroundings with good food and drink! Indeed he was sometimes criticised for enjoying it rather too much! And not always with the most ‘respectable’ folk! But cosiness wasn’t, of course, the heart of his message – especially as it concerned those best placed to have a cosy, comfortable life.
The message of Jesus was, at its heart, a radical call for change: change in society and change in the human heart. His message, while not narrowly political, nevertheless had political implications. This is why the political powers of his day conspired to destroy him – even from his birth if Matthew’s Nativity story is to be believed, but more probably from the time of his ministry and his ‘challenge to Jerusalem’. The religious establishment, the local puppet rulers and, most importantly, the imperial Roman authorities, all found Jesus to be an inconvenient presence, a ‘rabble-rouser’ and rebel who disturbed their cosiness.
But while Jesus quite rightly disturbed their cosiness, as all true prophets do disturb the cosiness of the privileged, he was no mere nationalist revolutionary. He saw that something far more fundamental was needed if what he called the Kingdom of God, the Messianic Age, was to be established in this world, in the here and now, in line with the ancient prophecies of visionaries like Isaiah and Micah. What was – what is – needed is a reorientation of our priorities: away from the pursuit of wealth and power and towards real, practical love in our personal relationships and in our dealings with all people with whom we come into contact. This is what is meant by the repentance that Jesus called for. Love, as Jesus taught it, does not mean a soft-headed indulgence of folly, wrongdoing and inhumanity, far from it, but it does require caring and kindness, understanding and empathy, courage in the face of evil, mercy and a readiness to forgive. Love requires a desire for peace, but not a supine passivity. It requires the will for true justice in society and in our personal relations.
To celebrate the birth of Jesus may quite legitimately involve joy and thanksgiving and the expression of our love for each other, but if it doesn’t also challenge us to change our ways and try to be better people, then what is the point? If it doesn’t move us to be kinder, fairer people; people more outraged by injustice and cruelty and by oppression and warmongering; people more angered by aggression against the innocent and by the selfish waste and destruction of the earth’s natural riches and resources; people more ready to do something about them in whatever constructive ways we can – if celebrating the birth of Jesus does not challenge us in this way, then why do we celebrate it? There is a better way to be human and Jesus invites and challenges us to take it: that is why his birth was an event of cosmic significance and it is why we celebrate Christmas.
As we know, Christmas can be an orgy of excessive consumption and bogus bonhomie, of a self-indulgent cosiness without conscience, an essentially meaningless charade that leaves us feeling empty and dissatisfied. And if the Nativity story is mentioned at all it is too often in a dumbed-down, sanitised and sentimental form that misses out its uncomfortable aspects: the supposed ‘shame’ and ‘dishonour’ of an unwed teenager giving birth to an illegitimate baby of uncertain paternity; the tyranny of an enforced head-count by a ruthless occupying power; the desperate search for shelter in which to have a baby; refugees fleeing to a foreign land to escape genocidal slaughter and seek asylum.
The apparently decorative features of the Nativity accounts – the star, the angels, the shepherds, the exotic visitors, their gifts – all have meaning that few understand today. They were put there by the gospel-writers to bring home the story’s cosmic significance for a contemporary audience and have lodged in our cultural consciousness ever since. But if you take these now decorative features away, what is left is quite a bleak story with all too many resonances in our world today: here in a United Kingdom where many face unexpected hardship; in Ukraine as it suffers under Putin’s evil aggression; in countries like Iran and Afghanistan where women are oppressed in the name of religion; in the famine-hit Horn of Africa; in flood-devastated areas of Pakistan and Nigeria, and so on around the world.
There is no easy, magic solution to these disasters. We cannot yet solve all the world’s problems and probably never will. But by embracing the real Christmas we can play our part, however small it may seem, in helping with some of them, even if they are only those that seem closest to us. It is by more people everywhere doing this, moved by faith and love and the awakened conscience, that those bigger problems – apparently so overwhelming to the individual – can be addressed. Jesus and all who have shared his spirit, challenge us to become that new and better humanity. This is the message of Christmas.
And this is what Charles Dickens says in that most famous of Christmas stories outside of the gospels. ‘A Christmas Carol’ is a hard-hitting story with a powerful message that belies the cosiness so often associated with it. It is the lesson brought home to Ebenezer Scrooge by the three Christmas spirits, and it is what redeems him. It is the lesson that we are not hopelessly corrupt and that we all have it in us, as human beings, to be saved from soul-destroying selfishness. As the renewed Scrooge declares, “I will honour Christmas in my heart and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present and the Future. The Spirits of all three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach.”
Dickens says of the transformed Scrooge that “it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well”, which means merrily and generously, with the injunction, “May that be truly said of us, and all of us.” “And so, as Tiny Tim observed, ‘God bless us, every one.’”
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