We have been hearing about Christmas certainly since October, maybe earlier in some shops. If you tried to work out what Christmas is all about from what you see in decorations, or on TV ads you would get a fairly strange idea. It would be all about snow everywhere, in an age when that is increasingly unlikely because of climate change. There are always jolly groups of friends and family in the TV ads, and you might even meet a film star in the supermarket according to one TV ad. A jolly overweight man appears everywhere. If you try and find out his origins you find he was invented as an advertising icon for Coca Cola over a hundred years ago. Christmas trees are a German import brought here by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s Husband, a hundred and fifty years ago. They were initially a fire risk since they originally had many candles.
Christmas trees
I have to admit I rather like decorating a Christmas tree because I can go mad with all sorts of decorations and bright colours. My Christmas tree looks like a Blaue Reiter painting, my favourite artists. (Look up the painter Franz Marc if you want to know who the Blau Reiter painters were, or if you are ever in Cologne go into the art gallery and see their paintings) I even saw a Christmas tree bauble in a supermarket looking like a food mixer. Christmas trees lend themselves to all sorts of symbolism. We even imported a song from Germany “Oh Christmas Tree” about them, which incidentally has the same tune as the “Red Flag”. Work that out if you can.
What is it really all about?
Enough of the various confusing symbols of Christmas. Let us delve deeper and try to find out what it is all about. We traditionally celebrate Christmas at the darkest time of the year, and it is an excuse for decorations, feasts, and above all lights. So do Hindus with Divali and Jews with Hannukah. Ancient Romans celebrated the Saturnalia at about the same time, which was an excuse for feasting and drinking.
The beginning of St John’s Gospel, which is traditionally read at Christmas, speaks about “The Light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never mastered it” (New English Bible). Most of us know the traditional story of Christmas, as is enacted in countless nativity plays. It is easy to find things in it which do not make sense. The shepherds would have been unlikely to have been out on the hills in the middle of winter, and lambs would certainly not have been born at that time. The wise men from the East are perhaps more credible, although they would probably not have arrived on the day Jesus was born.
But like many stories in the Bible, it is easier to understand what they symbolise rather than their exact historical accuracy. Shepherds were usually the marginal people in society, living on the hills because they were not wanted in the towns. The Wise Men symbolise people from all over the world coming to know about Christianity. Perhaps the much more realistic part of the Christmas Story is the reaction of Herod, the puppet king of Judea. As soon as he found out about a possible challenger to his rule, he wanted to get rid of him. By all accounts he was a nasty piece of work and only preserved his position by being subservient to the Romans. Jesus and his parents having to flee to Egypt and in effect becoming refugees is perhaps a much more credible story.
But there is more to Christmas than arguments about whether the story is true or not. Many people eat and drink too much at Christmas, but charities also receive much more income than normal at Christmas, and people remember the homeless in particular, possibly inspired by story of Mary and Joseph being homeless in Bethlehem. Many people also reach out to the lonely at Christmas too. Surely this is good.
But what of the actual meaning of Christmas? If you are not a Christian this is less easy perhaps to understand. Jesus, the light of the world, brought salvation to mankind. Put in the simplest terms I can think of, this means believing in something bigger and better than yourself and thinking of people other than yourself. Jesus put it very simply.” The First Commandment is Love the Lord your God with all your heart…and the second is this “Love your neighbour as yourself”(Mark 12, verse 31) Even if we cannot bring ourselves to love God, although many of us may do it more than we realise, then if we all loved our neighbours as ourselves the world would be a better place.
Of course, Christianity has been corrupted and hijacked through the ages by nationalists and conquerors and even Tommy Robinson is trying to do it today. The Russian Orthodox Church has become a propaganda arm of Putin and his schemes of conquest. But I sincerely believe that Christianity, and the contact many more people have with it at Christmas, is a positive force in our society, and many people benefit from the celebrations of Christmas, and the charitable giving and concern it promotes in society for people that many of us forget about for the rest of the year.
