Christmas is a joyous occasion. Everyone agrees upon it, but
when Christmas is separated from its sacred meaning, it can become a time of
doubt and dread. I sometimes attended a bereavement support group, and I found
there the single most frightening day of the year was Christmas Day. It’s not
only the missing partner, child or parent — though that’s fearful enough when
all the world’s apparently celebrating family closeness — but also the
expectation of ‘getting over it’ and having a happy day with the special need
to make everything all right for any children who may be present.
Recovering
alcoholics report the same phenomenon. Long previous planning is recommended as
to where, when and how the temptation to drink at Christmas may be forestalled.
Depression, suicide attempts, mental illnesses crowd hospitals along with road
accidents compliments of the season. Domestic violence spirals up off the
thermometer in the Christmas season, just when support services are winding
down for the long holiday break, and any money received with the intention that
it be spent to tide people over may all have been spent on Christmas — Christmas
as a reward for a year of hardship and struggle — making the post-Christmas
period one of poverty and regret for many.
Insofar as
Christmas is really about family, it’s important to realise the family being
celebrated isn’t our own dear and binding human families, but the Holy Family,
a unique and sacred situation. (The actual feast day is the Sunday following
Christmas.) Our families, as we know too well, are comprised of persons like
ourselves, short-tempered, full of mistakes and catastrophes, resolute in
disagreements, grieving, ill, angry, tearful, sometimes funny, sometimes
unwholesome and only part of the time glorious in achievement and astonishing
in beauty.
The Holy
Family comprises a Blessed, dedicated, and loving Mother, who meditates in her
heart and stores up signs of divine favour; a most wonderful Child, whose
titles have preceded him into a world longing for salvation; a just and
honourable Father (or as we would say today, stepfather), Joseph, who protects
both Mother and Child within his respected family, and this identification will
last into the adulthood of Jesus. Luke 3:23 at Jesus’ Baptism reports that ‘he
was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli’: what this
means is that for every social purpose Jesus was the son of Joseph — as what is
reported, supposed or believed of a person or family in that culture represents
the truth about them — and this parenthetical statement (it was thought) is
critically important because it is followed immediately by the genealogy of Joseph.
Now if
partners, stepfathers, and indeed biological fathers as well as every one in
charge of a child would take the approach of Saint Joseph and protect that child as one of
his or her own, the lesson of the Holy Family would have been truly learned.
There’s a gap between what we know of the Holy Family and what we see in the
present world, and this gap results from a lack of religious knowledge and
commitment and a high expectation of secular success. The gap brings us face to
face with the fact that Christmas isn’t really about family at all.
What is
brought into the world, manifested, incarnated, by the birth of Jesus at Bethlehem? What causes us
to celebrate our salvation at this time: surely Easter is the right time for it?
Yes, the King is born, and a great prophet arises. Yes, the child is laid in a
manger, but not through poverty: poverty doesn’t get to be distinguished in
this way. Joseph’s family is in the stable because of the press of people
arriving for purposes of taxation by the Roman Empire,
the same that will kill the child in due course. Yes, the shepherds and the
magi respond to signs and wonders, angels singing, a star walking with a
lantern through heaven. Something extraordinary has indeed taken place.
The late
John Taverner, on being asked if he prayed, replied that the only proper prayer
for a human being to make was this one: ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me,
because I am a sinner.’ And that’s the bottom line.
My own view
is that what is incarnated with the birth of Jesus is the forgiveness of sins. ‘Who
is this, who even forgives sins?’ It’s a truth of religion that Jesus died for
our sins, and that process begins with his birth. The bereaved may reflect on
their feelings of guilt for both the things that should not have been done and
the things we left undone to our sorrow as the beloved has died and it’s too
late to do them now. Who is this, who even forgives sins? Luke 7:36-50
describes a woman whose sins ‘which were many, have been forgiven’ and for this reason ‘she has shown great
love’. There we have the cause of the adoration surrounding Christmas. Those
who think they need no forgiveness have actually got it wrong. ‘The one to whom
little is forgiven, loves little’. Yes, it’s right to love the little Lord
Jesus, asleep in the manger: for our sins, which are many, can be forgiven
through the mercy of God. Perhaps we can even learn to forgive ourselves, given
time. For those who understand the great love incarnated at Christmas see that
mercy dwells among us through the favour of God. Gloria in excelsis Deo et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.
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