Last Sunday we went to hear some of Handel’s Messiah at the local parish church. It was a good community event. The musicians were mostly local and there was a high standard of professionalism in the performance – and lots of joy!
The Advent part of Messiah filled the second half of the Christmas concert. The first half was devoted to carols. There was ‘In Dulce Jubilo’ and the exquisite ‘Es ist ein Ros entsprungen’. So far so good! But they were swiftly followed by a lively and amusing rendition of ‘Jingle Bells’! For us, it was an awkward juxtaposition of the sacred and the secular. A one-horse open sleigh hurrying down to Bethlehem?! Santa’s little helpers around the crib! Was this a religious or an aesthetic reaction on our part? Probably the latter!
And then we came to our senses!
We have always believed that if a genuine separation between sacred and secular exists, the two realms are so close as to be inseparable. We might lament the fact that the commercialisation of Christmas and the secularisation of society appear to be well advanced processes but somehow, we doubt whether in a more ostensibly religious age, people were any more truly spiritual.
Our word ‘secular’ derives from the name given to those monks and friars who left the monastery to go to the market place there to preach the gospel and ask for alms. These ‘seculars’ may have witnessed to their faith but they also brought the mud and dust of the market place back into the monastery, which some monks never left, their life devoted to prayer. Some monks will have complained about the infection which the seculars brought back. Like all of us, they probably preferred their categories hard and fast!
But having faith is a two-way process. Jesus must be able to sit down with Santa, as it were. Our word ‘religion’, may well come partly from the Latin for a ‘bond’ or a ‘connection’. We believe that our Chrisitan faith and practice must be ‘tied’, ‘connected’ inextricably bound up with everyday life. If it is not, then it is not worth a Christmas candle.
So I am happy to see the Christmas trees brought to us by the Victorians side by side with a nativity scene. Angels watchfully protecting Santa’s grotto. In the midst of what, today, is a pretty ‘bleak midwinter’ we need some light, physical, social, emotional. The darkness cannot be allowed to overwhelm the light, as the Christmas reading from the Gospel of John says.
Another crossing of traditional boundaries is the ‘blue Christmas’ service for those for whom the traditional ‘joy’ is a difficult emotion to conjure at a time of bereavement, loneliness or illness. Those who organise such events say that they derive at least as much pleasure from them as those they cater for.
So the Christmas season may offer us an opportunity amidst all the tinsel and hilarity to firm up some of our ‘bonds’ and ‘connections’ which we may have neglected, be they social, emotional or religious.
The American journalist / theologian Frederick Buechner says that ‘if God appears in a stable there is no telling where he will turn up next’ (The Hungering Dark). That is the mystery of Christmas. Some random thought, a line of a carol, a small gesture of kindness or a word may quite take us by surprise. It may give us pause for thought – take us briefly where our minds do not often go. Maybe, just maybe, God will make a surprise appearance.
Photo: Creative Fabrica
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