One of the things we enjoyed as a family in my youth was the race for the Christmas Number One. It always seemed a big thing and my brothers and I listened to the Top Ten countdown on Sunday evenings, like so many others, to find out who had reached the ultimate goal for the year.
It’s a bit different these days with downloads instead of the vinyl 45s. This year we wait to see whether or not Wham! will make it to pole position with their 40-year-old Last Christmas. It’s certainly a memorable and singable hit even if the sentiment is not especially festive.
I spend much of my December singing, not the pop songs of yesteryear, but Christmas carols. Although the Church hangs on to Advent as a time of preparation and reflection, it’s easily overwhelmed by others’ preparations for the big celebration of Christmas. The words of carols are as familiar to me and many others as the words of Wham, Band Aid and Mariah Carey. The difference, perhaps, is that whilst the songs of the Top Ten (if that’s still a thing) speak so easily of transient things, the carols, re-telling the Christmas story, tell of something universally significant.
Familiarity can be a good thing but it can also lead to complacency. As we sing the beautiful words of Christmas carols, we re-tell what must surely by the greatest story ever told. It is a story we do well to take notice of and to try and hear it anew each December as we prepare to celebrate Christmas. This isn’t just a celebration of Jesus’ birth but an acknowledging of God’s love for creation and all humanity. God’s decision to intervene in the human story we all share is a decision to show and send love to earth. It was a decision to begin a new story with the most triumphant and glorious ending.
This great God-story begins with an unmarried couple, soon to be refugees, away from home in a place of political insecurity. At its centre, the birth of a child, God’s-self, born to show and to teach about God in a way never before seen but continued, ever since, by those who follow him and believe him to be God’s chosen one, God with us, Emmanuel, the Christ, the Messiah.
At this Christmas time, as we hear the familiar words, perhaps join in with the well-known carols, and even the pop songs, I hope that we can try, at least, to hear them as if for the first time and to think, to wonder at this great thing which God has done for us. I hope we can remember and trust that we are loved, so very much, by the one who brought us and everything into being. I hope we can remember too how God shows us who the important people in our communities are, people like the family Jesus was born in to, and remember that when we act towards them, we act towards God.
I hope that you will have a very happy and blessed Christmas, for God is with us.
