WHAT DO YOU THINK OF CHRISTMAS?

Well, every year we hear the complaints about the keeping of Christmas. They range from the bishops and others denouncing, as gently as possible of course (they don't want to cause any offence, so their complaints are couched so that they can be ignored), to those who demand to have religion kept out of Christmas. In the meantime, the toy makers keep on coming up with new items (expensive always) to tempt people - especially the young who are persuaded that they must have the latest craze. Remember the year when 'cabbage-patch dolls' were all the rage and parents were offering ridiculous sums of money to obtain such a doll for their spoilt offspring? There was the man who flew over to New York and back to buy such a doll for his daughter. Where is that doll now? In all probability at the back of a shelf or cupboard. For shopkeepers it's the prime time for them to make money, and for many the period when so much goes on the plastic cards - cards which have to be paid off sooner or later. For most it is a time for eating and drinking to excess - celebrating the festive season.

Is that what it's all about?

For Christians it is the commemoration of God, the Creator of all, showing His love for His creation by coming into His world. So the Second Person of the Holy Trinity emptied Himself of His Power and Glory to become one like us. Such a momentous and tremendous act should be enough to send people to their knees. (Well, we do, when singing or saying the Creed at Mass, kneel for those words: For us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.)

All this happened some 2009 years ago; our calendar is wrong and Joseph and Mary did not go to Bethlehem in our December - when it would be cold and wet and the unmade roads (tracks largely) from Nazareth to Bethlehem would be largely impassable - but in the first week of September, with all the advantages of the late summer. (The first verse of Christina Rossetti's hymn (carol?) is quite incorrect.) Joseph and Mary arrived in Bethlehem quite some time before Mary gave birth; as Luke records, 'while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered' (Luke 2.6). (So that carol Little Donkey, which we will hear repeated seemingly endlessly, is wrong.) For her own protection and to fulfil the Jewish Law (Leviticus 12 and 15) she had to leave the 'living space' - inn is a very bad translation - and went into a cave stable. So the idea of innkeepers standing at doorways shouting 'No room, go away' is just plain nonsense and a complete misreading of the Scriptures. If the Protevangelion - an Apocryphal Gospel attributed to St James - is correct, Joseph left Mary there, where she was guarded and supported by the sons and daughters of Joseph, while he went for a Hebrew midwife. That seems more likely than Mary being on her own without any female or midwifery support.

At the time of the Birth the angels appeared to some shepherds who were out on the hills looking after their sheep. The shepherds were not nice people, but dirty and smelly because of their trade, and not held in high regard by the Jews - they were almost outcasts. But the message of the Birth of the Saviour was given first to them. God is the God of all people ™ He doesn't exclude people because of their appearance or poverty.

Bethlehem would be, at that time, a very tiny village, and no doubt by early morning most of the villagers would have been to see the Baby. Jesus came first to the Chosen People, to those who should have recognized him. He comes in this Festival of the Nativity to those who would recognize Him and so join with the angels in giving praise and thanks. For Christians the way to keep the Festival is not by eating and drinking to excess, not by buying and giving expensive presents, but by putting Jesus first and humbly and devoutly give glory to God.

Fr. Ron Gwyther

PS The Wise Men, an unknown number of them, didn't come to the Stable at Bethlehem at the time of the Birth of Jesus, but about two years later to the house where the Child was with His mother (Matthew 2.11).