What Are You Doing For Christmas?

 Reflection offered at the 'midnight' service for Sawston Free Church via Zoom - acknowledging a variety of sources which I have 'lost')

What are you doing for Christmas?  That question has somewhat different connotations this year; and, indeed, some of us might well have answered it differently, just a few weeks, or even days, ago.  Christmas is looking different.  Boris has been accused by many of cancelling Christmas.  Well, I am prepared to accuse him of quite a lot, but not of that.  Because Christmas is not cancelled,  Christmas is difficult.  Christmas is different.  But – unto us a child is born!  The light has come.  The Chrismas message of peace and love is alive and well.  Christmas is happening.  And, though the answers may not be easy, or we would expect or hope, we still, even at this late moment, might, as it were, ask of each other: what are you doing for Christmas?  Or, perhaps, what does Christmas mean to you?  How does Christmas fit this strange landscape in which we find ourselves?

But think of the questions Mary and Joseph might have faced.  When’s the baby due?  Where are you going?  Where are you going to stay?

2021 is census year in Britain.  It is due on March 21^st.  But, fortunately, we don’t all have to go back to our burthplace in order to be counted, as appears to have been the case for Mary and Joseph.  At least, they had to go to Joseph’s birthplace.  And so they got caught up in what must have been a somewhat amazing population movement and it’s hardly surprising that, when they got there, they couldn’t find anywhere to stay.  And that’s how they came to be in a stable – so the story goes.

In many ways, it’s a quite incredible story.  Surely someone would have taken pity on Joseph and his heavily pregnant wife.  Surely there was a room somewhere for someone in this situation.  But then the story is incredible – that God should come to earth and share our human experience – but that’s what Christmas is all about.

It all seems quite remote from things like reindeer and tinsel, mince pies and balloons.  So many things have been built on across the years.  And that’s fine.  Traditions grow and develop.  It’s fine so long as we remember the essential Christmas message – that God came to earth in human form and so demonstrated his amazing love for us. 

The stable and the shepherds remind us that God comes to those who don’t fit in.  The wise men and their gifts remind us that God comes to those who do.  The angels remind us that what is offered is summed up in that tremendous word ‘peace’ – Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.

What are you doing for Christmas?  I’m celebrating the birth of Jesus, born in a stable in Bethlehem, God come to earth to offer love, and joy, and peace.