Christmas

Christmas 

On the run up to Christmas, I have been thinking – always dangerous for me. I began by thinking about all the good things that Christmas represents. Things like the reason for it in the first place – Christ’s birth and the whole Christmas story. Then I thought of all the happy Christmases gone by. This was tinged with sadness as I remembered those who have gone or left or whatever. I remember the year my two boys, then aged 3 and 7, reacted when they realised that it was indeed Christmas day and Santa had visited – evidenced by the piles of shining presents wrapped up and piled into a stack for each person. Christmas dinner was the event of the day, we didn’t attend church at that time, followed by opening time. Squeals of delight and lots of thank-you’s with Mum keeping an eye on who got what from whom – amazing how women can do that isn’t it?

Then the Lord reminded of those with less than us – we were almost anything but rich, just having sufficient saved through the year to make Christmas special. But there were many with less than us and some with nothing, or worse, no-one with whom to share Christmas. He reminded me of the Christmas “soup kitchens” where many got their only reasonable meal of the period. He reminded me of the vision He gave me earlier this year of a Christmas day meal for the homeless or lonely or disadvantaged. Sadly, this isn’t going to happen this year, but it will – it will.

All the schmaltz of Christmas, all the greed and over-indulgence, all the schmoozy music and sickly sentimentality – what’s it all for? It certainly doesn’t even begin to reflect the “reason for the season”. It all comes back to the Gospel doesn’t it? For God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son – at “Christmas” – as a baby - in a stable.  

Perhaps if the world remembered this too then the church would be genuinely packed by real believers rather than by the pretending “Christmas and Easter Brigade” who come more for the sentimentality than the birth of the Messiah.

So maybe I can urge you to remember those who have less; those who have no-one; those who have nowhere this Christmas. Remember those who have perhaps lost everything and everyone this Christmas. No all of them, but perhaps just one person who’s Christmas you can make a little brighter this year. Then there really would be a good reason for the season demonstrated for just one person at a time.

“Inasmuch as you do it for the least one of these my brothers, you do it for me.”