On Choosing the Right Time: Christmas.

Chapter Eight of the Tao Te Ching compares the Sage to water. ‘Water benefits all things, and does not compete with them.’ It has many qualities, among them the art of ‘choosing the right time.’[1] Water is also the symbol of Baptism, which benefits all who partake of it.

            What is the right time? An example from music suggests the critical time or space between the notes: Mozart called this absence of sound the most beautiful sound in music.The liturgical calendar includes the times or spaces between the seasons of Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter: these are the seasons of Ordinary (ordered, set in order) Time.

            I recently met a friend who attended a family funeral in Advent, and who said he found it changed the meaning of the season for him. Before this, he thought that funerals (and so of course deaths) should only happen in Ordinary Time. Or maybe that’s my interpretation of his actually most profound thoughts. Ordinary Time between Christmas and Lent comprises the events of Christ’s childhood and public ministry: not ordinary at all.

            When is the right time to have a nervous breakdown? Who would choose Christmas? Yet the difficulty of getting a bed in a psychiatric ward during the holidays bears witness to the season being full of time. No one chooses to break down at all, of course, yet something about the time chooses itself.

            The date of Christmas on 25 December places it close to the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere: logical that the birth of the true Light should fall then, when the sun’s power grows again after the fading descent into winter. Yet for us in the South, it’s the Summer Solstice, which provides the greatest number of daylight hours: the most Light.

            The date is actually a little before Christmas Day, 21 or 22 December, giving plenty of time for the Magi to have their conversation with Herod the Great before getting to Bethlehem. The Church originally set 21 December, this year’s solstice date, as the feast of St. Thomas the Apostle, who famously asked the evidence of his senses before believing the risen Christ, since worshipping a ghost would be a serious matter. He chooses the right time: it’s not too late for him.

            St. Paul writes: ‘You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.’[2] The right time was, he says, ‘while we were still sinners.’ There are many theological implications of this statement. But as regards the time, it seems, it’s not too late for any of us.

            Water seeks a level. That level is often the lowest. Lao Tzu suggests that although everyone despises what is low, the water has no thoughts about this. It just goes on flowing, filling up the low places and dwelling with the Tao.

            Christmas is about the Light of the World, the water of Baptism, the fire of Pentecost. It brings to earth the airy angelic song, ‘bending low’ as the carol says: all the elements, all the seasons, all the past and the future, all at once, at the right time.

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[1] In the translation of Lin Yutang.

[2] NIV.