CHRISTMAS COMES BUT ONCE A YEAR

Christmas is usually a time of joy and celebration, and as we learn from Dickens` Scrooge even the mean can become generous and warm-hearted. What a pity it isn`t like that all year round. It is easy to be sentimental about Christmas and forget that the season has often been a time of controversy as well; as comfort. Even on the first Christmas Day we find the shepherds 'sore afraid'. In 1652 Parliament was presented with a terrible remonstrance against Christmas Day. This led the House of Commons to order the abolition of the festival and to resolve to meet on Christmas Day itself. I don't detect among present MPs any great desire to meet on December 25 but I do find a variety of attitudes amongst the wider population. There are those with child-like faith in their hearts and wonder in their eyes. Others have left childhood behind and find no mystery in the world. Still others have their vision distorted by experiences of anger or pain. There is some truth in each of these attitudes and they need and correct each other.

The person with the childlike outlook cherishes the traditional Christmas virtues. Emphasis is rightly placed on the simple things: motherhood, family affection, friendship. All our lives are enriched by the love and support of others. .When God speaks through a child, he speaks a most human language. But this childlike vision in maturity is not the same as childishness. The person who has put behind childish things also has a place at the stable. Many people think they have rejected the Christian faith because they no longer accept what they were taught in primary school. Christmas card understanding shrivels up as we face the suffering and injustice which come to even the most fortune in this world.

We have sentimentalized the Bible and the person who has left behind childish things can help us to see the brutal realism of Bethlehem. Joseph and Mary are displaced persons. They move from their home in response to an edict from a government which is organizing a census, treating people as numbers. Luke's gospel includes this detail to point the contrast between the wonder and tenderness of God's gift in the birth of a child and the inhuman demands of the system imposed by emperors, national bureaucracy and distant high priests, The birth itself is quickly followed by the massacre of the Bethlehem babies — the Holy Innocents. The Christian hope was born in the darkness and the light of Christ continues to shine in the darkness which is acknowledged but never conquered.

As we prepare to celebrate Christmas, 2009 in a world in which thousands are living precarious existences, whether from landmines in Afghanistan or in Cumbria from floods and collapsing bridges, let us remember that we are all part of one world in which sorrow is universal, but so also an be joy.

STUART MEWS