Getting into the Christmas spirit?

It’s that time of year once more. The season of goodwill, giving, Christmas cheer, and the celebration of the birth of one small baby circa 2000 years ago. Once the lights are up, the Christmas cards written, the carols sung and the presents wrapped, we can finally say we are “in the Christmas spirit” with an exhausted sigh, surrendering to the festivities and excess to come with welcome anticipation..

I was busying myself the other day, rushing from shop to shop, lists running through my head and dodging the crowds and the money collectors who seem to multiply on the streets in proportion to the season of generosity. I was thrust a card in my hand, which I hurriedly shoved in my coat pocket, only to resurface when I got home to disburden my load.

It wasn’t a flyer persuading me I needed this item to have the perfect Christmas, or to ensure my loved one would appreciate me, it wasn’t a half price sale to encourage me to buy twice as much as I’d planned. It was a Samaritans card, offering someone to talk to 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and just in case you doubted them, a 2012 calendar could be found on the back.

It struck a discordant note from the rushing and the spending and the humming along to Christmas tunes that my day had consisted of. The thought occurred to me that we so easily forget in the hype that ‘Christmas’ is thrust upon many people who do not want it, indeed who dread the absence it makes them feel all the more, shakes up the memories they would rather let lie. At the time when the message of joy and goodwill inherent in a festivity could not be more fitting, our twinkling lights take precedence, and those that are left behind rely on a stranger placing a card in their hand, offering them a number to call to escape from the mania, anytime.

And so I came back to the question, what is the Christmas spirit?

Is it a self-confirming sentimentality that in being abundantly generous once a year we are better people? Is it the season in which we are cornered into forced congeniality with distant family? Is it the one and only day in which we thoughtfully display our love and affection for those ‘nearest and dearest’?

God help us if that cynical snapshot is all the spirit of Christmas has amounted to!

If it is nothing else, it is a counter-cultural call to embark on the best kind of person we can be, in giving and receiving. Marking the small beginnings of a baby born in a stable in Bethlehem who would call into question the status quo and reveal a new potential for the way we should live our lives. I would like to think it much more fitting that the spirit of Christmas, even in its secularised form, could reflect something of this possibility in a change for the better, in all its rawness and vulnerability…

Rx

May the Spirit
bless you with discomfort
at easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships
so that you will live
deep in your heart

May the Spirit
bless you with anger
at injustice and oppression
and exploitation of people and the earth
so that you will work for justice, equity and peace.

May the Spirit
bless you with tears to shed
for those who suffer
so that you will reach out your hand
to comfort them

May the Spirit
bless you with the foolishness
to think you can make a difference in the world,
and do things
which others say cannot be done.
Amen.

-Uniting Church Blessing-

Advertisement