When Christians, including myself, preach or write about Christmas, we are often tempted to emphasise the contrast between the rich religious tradition of Christmas and the shallower secular celebration. We might describe the secular celebration as frantic. The labour and weariness of ending the work year are multiplied by the host of social events associated with Christmas: buying presents, perhaps hunting for a Christmas tree with its lights and decorations, the summoning and arrival of Santa, sending Christmas messages, and purchasing Christmas-wrapped grog, chocolates, mince pies, and the toys, clothes and devices also gift-wrapped. All these activities can be described in economic terms about making and spending money, about consumption and about the power of the advertising industry.
The celebration of Christmas Day itself is no less hectic. It may be filled with the opening of presents, the gathering of extended families with all the pleasure and tensions this entails, the sharing of lavish food and drink, responding to the appeals for children in hospital and for other good causes, and perhaps departing as a family to the beach.
That is the secular experience of Christmas. On the other hand, the Christian activities of Christmas are — well, what? For most people, they are surely much the same. They negotiate the same pressures, involve most of the same tasks, and perhaps add to the mix a religious service and Christian themed cards, cribs and decorations.
Christians might be tempted to see in the overlap between the Christian and the cultural observance of Christmas grounds for despair. They would be mistaken. This overlap suggests that the cultural and the Christian observances of Christmas are bound together and shape one another. It is too simple to identify the cultural observance with the materialist, narrowly economic and competitive aspects of our culture. At Christmas, after all, people relax instead of work, eat and drink at leisure, spend time with their families, visit relatives and friends, take holidays, and perhaps think of people who are doing it tough in hospital, nursing homes and on the streets. These activities actually run counter to the competitive individualism dominant in our culture.
The distinctively Christian celebration of Christmas does not conflict with these aspects of our culture but radicalises them. In the Christmas story, God becomes involved in the minute details of human society, including the festivals associated with birth, marriage and death. The secular customs and practices of our Australian Christmas, no less than the practices of Jesus’ time, are occasions for celebration. To gather with our extended family at Christmas, to write to distant friends (even through online Santa cards), to take time off work, to soften for an hour or so the hard edges of workplace relationships, and to donate to charities, all embody values that are affirmed and grounded in the Christian story.
The Christian stories, however, also have a depth that challenges all our practices, Christian or otherwise. They include the most hassled people and most extreme experiences: a heavily pregnant woman compelled to travel for days on foot for tax purposes, a couple homeless when their baby is due, a baby born in the fields, the intrusion of ostracised shepherds, and the terror of refugees forced to flee for their lives. The stories, too, look beyond infancy to the public life of a good man appealing to the best traditions of his people, his rejection, brutal death and game-changing rising from the dead.
The distinctively Christian celebration of Christmas encourages all people of good will, whatever our religious beliefs, to walk for a time in solidarity with people who are at the bottom of the pile, to take time to dream of who we are called to be, and to reflect on what kind of society we want. The bustle of Christmas can yield to space for reflection.
'The distinctively Christian celebration of Christmas encourages all people of good will, whatever our religious beliefs, to walk for a time in solidarity with people who are at the bottom of the pile, to take time to dream of who we are called to be, and to reflect on what kind of society we want.'
The inn with no room, the people in the parks, the threat of Herod, the disreputable shepherds, the refugees in Egypt, the rumour of angels and the realities of refugee life provide the background for the stories of Jesus’ infancy. Their counterparts are found in our personal and public stories today. They make a claim on us all the year round. As does the celebration of our shared humanity and of all the events and spaces that mark its ebb and flow. In that sense we wish all of you our readers a happy Christmas.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.
Main image: Chris Johnston illustration.