Well, here we are. The festive season is fully upon us. Shops are full of crazed shoppers buying food they will never eat and presents that not every recipient will appreciate and all the while being forced to listen to piped Christmas songs such as the one whose first line forms the title of this post. It is this mad rush that makes some of us sit back, observe the chaos and complain about the rampant materialism and commercialisation of the modern Christmas. It makes us long for times when Christmas was simpler - when chestnuts roasted on an open fire and you counted yourself blessed if you got a tangerine in your stocking and everyone remembered the real reason for the season.
But what purpose does our cynicism really serve? Do our complaints about the hassle and busyness and materialism really help us to focus on the Christ-child or do they just make us appear to be Scrooges?
Why does it have to be either-or? In the end, with all of our complaints about losing the meaning of Christmas in the mad rush of worldly celebration, most of us will still spend the 25th happily opening our presents, sitting down to a larger than normal dinner and watching (or Sky plussing) our favourite festive TV shows. Many of us will have been to church late on Christmas Eve or early on Christmas morning. There it may be the case that we will hear one last heartfelt plea to focus on the Christmas story over the course of the day itself but perhaps that is the wrong approach.
In the preceding weeks we will have been to carol services and nativity services. We will (hopefully) have had the opportunity to hear about the significance of the incarnation in an adult sermon as well as seeing it played out by our children dressed in dressing gowns and tea towels. We will have had the opportunity to contribute to causes that make Christmas that much easier for the less well off, either in our own country or overseas. And now we come to the day itself and we feel guilty because we haven't focussed enough on the child and another Christmas has passed without our expectations of the season being met.
Perhaps it is time to relax about all this. Observe all your normal traditions, whether they be food, presents and family time or serving Christmas lunch to a few homeless people or standing round the piano singing 'Hark! the herald angels sing' or watcing Doctor Who (or the Queen's Speech - sorry ma'am). God has given us many good things to enjoy and he intends us to enjoy them with gratitude in our hearts. All the gifts he gives us are brought to their completion and fulfilment in that one indescribable gift, given at Bethlehem.
Enjoy this Christmas season to the very best of your ability. If, for you, there is some sadness here with the absence of a loved one, don't cover it up or hide it away for fear of spoiling the day for others. Give people the opportunity to stand with you, pray for you and share with you the true meaning of Immanuel, God with us in every circumstance of life. Let that knowledge bring peace and, yes, joy into your heart.
He crossed time and space to be your Saviour. Enjoy that fact this Christmas by enjoying the day, however you choose to spend it. Happy Christmas!
Friday 23 December 2011
Friday 16 December 2011
Why the death of Christopher Hitchens is such sad news.
Today it was announced that Christopher Hitchens, one of the leading lights of New Atheism had died from pneumonia - a complication of the cancer from which he had been suffering. He was obviously a very bright man and possessed a great intellect. He was also a scathing and provocative debater There will be many people who (like myself) disagreed profoundly with him and who will be tempted to celebrate or crow over his passing. PLEASE resist this temptation.
Hitchen's death is sad because he leaves behind a sorrowing, grieving family for whom we all should have compassion. His death is sad because it reminds all of us that whatever intellectual heights we achieve or whatever career success, status or wealth come our way, we are all subject to the inevitable statistic that one in every one person dies.
His death, like every other death, is sad because it reminds that there is something not right about the very existence of death. In the comments on his death on the BBC website many of his fans and followers were using the letters RIP, or talking about the loss of a great soul or even expressing the hope that they might meet again the next time around. No doubt some of this will have been deliberately tongue in cheek but not all of it was. What was certainly not tongue in cheek was the expression by many of a sheer disbelief that their hero was gone. All of this, to me expresses an inability, deep within the human psyche, to reconcile ourselves with death as something normal, natural and part of life. We simply cannot reconcile the thought that humanity is just a random and meaningless colection of atoms with the feelings we experience when someone we love, or by whom we have been influenced, dies. We cannot help but feel that there must be more.
Now, Christopher Hitchens' followers will eventually suppress those feelings and carry on the New Atheist struggle but for those of us who disagreed with him, we should resist the temptation to jump up and down on his death. Instead we should try gently to show those who agree with him that their feelings about the wrongness of death are not, themselves, wrong but point to the fact that their needs to be a better solution than the one Hitchens, Dawkins et al have come up with.
From that point, maybe we can point them to the words of the carols (which Richard Dawkins apparently loves singing as a 'cultural Anglican') which tell them that the solution has come in Christ who was 'born that man no more may die'.
I am deeply saddened that Christopher Hitchens has died from such an awful disease. I did not share his opinions. I believe that much of what he wrote was wrong and often deliberately offensive to people of faith but that only makes me all the more sad, both for him and for his followers. I would encourage as many Christians as possible to express themselves carefully, thoughtfully and compassionately today and to do so for not other reason than the one given by the apostle Peter; 'Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.'
Hitchen's death is sad because he leaves behind a sorrowing, grieving family for whom we all should have compassion. His death is sad because it reminds all of us that whatever intellectual heights we achieve or whatever career success, status or wealth come our way, we are all subject to the inevitable statistic that one in every one person dies.
His death, like every other death, is sad because it reminds that there is something not right about the very existence of death. In the comments on his death on the BBC website many of his fans and followers were using the letters RIP, or talking about the loss of a great soul or even expressing the hope that they might meet again the next time around. No doubt some of this will have been deliberately tongue in cheek but not all of it was. What was certainly not tongue in cheek was the expression by many of a sheer disbelief that their hero was gone. All of this, to me expresses an inability, deep within the human psyche, to reconcile ourselves with death as something normal, natural and part of life. We simply cannot reconcile the thought that humanity is just a random and meaningless colection of atoms with the feelings we experience when someone we love, or by whom we have been influenced, dies. We cannot help but feel that there must be more.
Now, Christopher Hitchens' followers will eventually suppress those feelings and carry on the New Atheist struggle but for those of us who disagreed with him, we should resist the temptation to jump up and down on his death. Instead we should try gently to show those who agree with him that their feelings about the wrongness of death are not, themselves, wrong but point to the fact that their needs to be a better solution than the one Hitchens, Dawkins et al have come up with.
From that point, maybe we can point them to the words of the carols (which Richard Dawkins apparently loves singing as a 'cultural Anglican') which tell them that the solution has come in Christ who was 'born that man no more may die'.
I am deeply saddened that Christopher Hitchens has died from such an awful disease. I did not share his opinions. I believe that much of what he wrote was wrong and often deliberately offensive to people of faith but that only makes me all the more sad, both for him and for his followers. I would encourage as many Christians as possible to express themselves carefully, thoughtfully and compassionately today and to do so for not other reason than the one given by the apostle Peter; 'Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.'
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