I understand that, with some families, planning for the Christmas season starts
early. This year it looks as if there will be no pantomime nor visits to Santa’s
Grotto, lights being switched on nor Christmas Markets. Notwithstanding social
distancing, quarantine, isolation and the return of lockdown we may still be
able to enjoy some of these Christmas preliminaries but they will have to be
safe.
We clerics, preachers and catechists will feel the responsibility to reflect on
new ways in which millions of humans, through this pandemic, have shared in
the passion of Jesus. It may prompt some of us to reflect on suffering and the
close relationship between the presence of Calvary Christ’s birth in Bethlehem.
As we near the end of this pandemic year and hopefully Covid 19 starts to
come to the end does Calvary cast a shadow over thoughts of the nativity? For
example in Luke’s opening and closing chapters it is possible to catch the ways
in which the author joins the nativity with death and resurrection. There is the
shadow of death but also featured is the gift of divine peace. Matthew after
the Crucifixion shows how everything hopeless can be changed and good can
be victorious over evil as his theme recalls a central theme in the nativity story.
The point that many learned preachers and scholars make is that Jesus’ birth
and death were but one continual act, and his Christmas Day and Good Friday
are but one evening and the morning of the same day. How often have we
heard that Christians put too much emphasis on Christmas and not enough on
Easter? Consider this image that the babe in swaddling clothes comes with a
mission to fulfil. We sing carols for his birth and see him taken down from the
cross, wrapped in a clean linen cloth and laid in the tomb of a friend. The cloth
is left behind in the empty tomb on Easter morning.
It is considered that without the connection between Easter and Christmas we
have no reason for our joy and are merely celebrating a mid winter solstice as
the people have for hundreds of years. Some may consider that today’s
commercialisation of Christmas isolates it but fails, from a Christian
perspective, to make it stand on its own apart from Easter. It may well be that
this recipe will only add to the sadness that we are experiencing during this
pandemic. So perhaps a good Covid remedy, as we hopefully look forward to a
vaccine, should be to harness our Christmas spirit as we support our village’s
supreme food bank efforts, help for the homeless and other charitable
initiatives. Christmas represents the beginning and, if that was all we have,
wouldn’t we be fooling ourselves and missing the joy that is God’s gift to us?
Deacon John Mullin