CHRISTMAS in northern latitudes is a time for gathering in warm spaces, closing out the brisk, sharp air outside and finding a warm space with people closest to us, people with whom we feel safe. It’s a time for being on the inside, looking out.
For most of my working life, I have bemoaned the obliteration of Christmas by commercialism; I have written my fair share of laments about it. These days it is so much easier, because the break between Christmas holiday and Christmas story is now complete.
The sheer number of well-organised carol concerts means those for whom Christmas is about nostalgia, have plenty of places to go to rehearse the familiar, without having to worry about what it all means.
In the past few years, I’ve been discovering new generations, not having been raised in church, are coming to it fresh, wanting to know what it means.
This week, I have been asked about ‘the people who walked in darkness’ in the prophets, or Mary’s song about ‘he has put down the mighty from their seats and exalted the humble and meek, he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty”.
At a time when surveys are showing the gap between our rich and poor to be higher than ever, when reports about UK poverty speak of ‘destitution by design’ and the UN is investigating why we, one of the world’s most wealthy nations, has poverty at more than 20 per cent, we really are living in an age where Christmas stories about a God on the side of the poor are beginning to look topical.
To do a Christmas which is faithful to its core stories, is to pay the same attention that God does, to those on the outside, looking in.
Rev Andrew Spurr
Vicar of Evesham
