It’s come round to that time of year again when it seems that everyone in the public eye wants to remind us about what they say is “the real message of Christmas”.
Very piously, we’re told that Christmas isn’t really about the shopping and the selling or the partying or the feasting or what blockbusters are to be shown on the television. No, it’s about families and children and peace and goodwill, and perhaps (only perhaps) even about a baby born in a stable two thousand years ago.
Who do they think they’re kidding? Christmas is the great mid-winter commercial festival that keeps our shops going through the rest of the year, that powers the wheels (or the microchips) of industry and commerce. Manufacturers probably already know what will be our must-have gifts for next year’s celebrations.
But the truth is that for many people, Christmas is a very stressful time, when they feel pressured by expectations that can never be realised, when everyone is expected to smile, when sadness is taboo.
But life isn’t all up-beat. We experience joys, yes, but also sorrows. There are things that we find difficult - people we find difficult - as well as things we can sail through, people who are easy to get along with. There are times when everything is going along swimmingly but there are also times when we just don‘t want to know.
For me, the real message of Christmas, is the good news that in Jesus Christ God is pleased to engage with the world of our day-to-day experiences - to enter into his world as someone like us - to take the rough with the smooth, the bad with the good.
Theologians call this the miracle of the Incarnation. And for me, that’s what Christmas is really all about.
With my best wishes,
John-David Yule