Issue 150

Christmas time...

04th December 2006

It's that time of year again. Trees are taking root in people's front rooms and generations of turkeys won't escape our dinner tables. We spend money we don't have, buying presents for people who already have everything they need. This is Christmas: the festive season we all love and look forward to every year. But is this consumerism really what the "season of goodwill" is all about?

Most people know in the back of their mind the whole season has something to do with the birth of a religious figure. This baby, born in a stable to a virgin, who has split history in two and changed the face of the world. What ever you think about Jesus Christ of Nazareth, you can't argue he hasn't made a massive impact on history since his simple, messy and dramatic entrance to the world.

With Christianity spreading throughout the Roman Empire, Julius, the Bishop of Rome, in 350AD declared the 25th December as the date to celebrate Christmas, the birthday of the Bethlehem born baby. Of course, Jesus was probably born in spring; the Bible tells us the shepherds had newly born spring lambs.

The reality of the first Christmas wasn't as clean cut and comfortable as we learned in Sunday school. The reality of the nativity scene looks, to me, more like an episode of Eastenders. Mary was a teenage mum, probably about 14 years old, because that was the age women got married in those days. Poor Joseph had to trust his wife had been faithful, even though she was a virgin who managed to get pregnant!

Next, Mary goes in to labour in a smelly donkey shed, in the back of a pub (Inn) and there is no midwife, it was messy and bloody! Contrary to what "Away in a Manger", says, it seems more convincing that baby Jesus did cry his eyes out, after all he was a real human baby, imagine if you had just been born in a barn - you too would be crying!

The Messiah, born in stable, then had to runaway to Egypt to escape genocide; it's all just not very Hollywood, is it? However, I believe that this is the beauty of the Christmas story. This is the real message of Christmas, that God has came as a real human, in a real messy way to a real messy hurting world. This is reality.

Another thing that shocks me about the Christmas story is the angels first went to the lowest of the low, to the 'chavs' of that time. Shepherding in the ancient world was the worst job a man could have, a typical shepherd would spend weeks simply with sheep in the wilderness. It's the equivalent of being a traffic officer or a bin man today, nobody wanted to do such an uneducated, unglamorous occupation. But this dysfunctional, working class, group of society are the first people to hear about Christmas.

That really is "Joy to the World", God has come to bring peace and hope to all, and he's starting with societies most marginalised. The Christmas story is for everyone and anyone.

If you take Christ out of Christmas, you are left with the word mas; a mass amount of stuff. Stuff clogs my room and slows my life down. This Christmas, when you are stressed, trying to find presents in over packed shops, remember the birth of baby who has come to free us from materialism and "stuff". This is the lost message of Christmas, that God is with us, and he has come to bring hope to a really messy world.

Christopher Allen