Christmas is over and done with for another year.
The full financial damage is still to be felt and those who don’t like Christmas are emerging from their Christmas-free zones or from behind the forced smiles and happy family façades, glad that life is heading back towards normality.
Sort of. Almost. Only the New Year celebrations to go.
In Scotland, in the not so distant past, Christmas Day was a working day just like any other. It was a holiday south of the border, but Scotland opted for the 1st and 2nd of January instead.
Bizarrely, Wikipedia (that font of all knowledge, sometimes) equates the rise in Christmas celebrations with a fall in the influence of the Church. A religious holiday becomes more popular as the Church’s popularity wanes.
How does that work? I am sure there are those far more qualified than I am to answer that question but I suspect it may well have more to do with selling points than with faith.
What it means however, is that New Year has become the time to pause and look back and look forward while Christmas has become insanely busy and all consuming – literally. Which, as a person of faith, possibly does not bother me as much as perhaps it ought to.
It doesn’t bother me because the mound of presents we give children, or feel we should, the groaning tables of food, the expectation that Christmas should always be jolly and families perfect, are about as far from the point of the Christian story of the arrival of the baby Jesus, as you can get.
This is a baby who came to give his all to everyone else. A baby who was born into poverty and who, along with his too young parents, had to flee the country because of the political climate. We’re talking here about the stuff of nightmares being reduced to a children’s bedtime story.
But while Christmas has been hijacked, New Year still has room for reflection and for spending time with those we love – provided we avoid the hangover.
In Dornoch, we encourage people to find a few minutes to come into the cathedral on 31st Dec between 4-6pm. In the dark we set up a candlelit labyrinth and invite people to “journey” to its heart, and to the heart of Christ, and then to go on and turn to face the future trusting that Christ goes with us and before us.
It’s all about thinking of where we have been and where we are going. It’s about remembering people and places and times and giving thanks for them – and then committing to making a fresh start in the new year. That new start involves trying to live our lives in a way that helps us to be the blessing we know, to others.
That makes it all sound very holy, but it’s really just taking advantage of a natural turning point in the year and encouraging us to think beyond ourselves to the impact for the better we could have on others and on the world around us.
And to me, that’s about something far more important than how much money we can spend on decorating our house with light shows or how many presents we can give or get. It’s about recognising that what enriches people’s lives is not the ‘things’ we have but the people we love and the experiences we are able to share with them.
What leaves the most lasting impression on anyone and what makes the greatest, positive, impact is not the gift an individual may have bought another, but the time one person has given to another. The laughs that have been shared as well as the tears and the hardships people have come through together.
Oh wait….
That would be what the actual (real) Christmas story is about. God giving us his time… as well as his self. God being ready to share with us what makes us smile and what reduces us to tears. God standing by us in the toughest moments of life and not letting us go from his sight or his grasp. Ever.
And all the while, holding out to us, both a challenge and a hope.
The challenge? To dare to look for God with us: to dare to see him in the every day, in the good and the bad and the indifferent. Always there.
The hope? That life is about more than what we happen to have or can achieve or are. That there is someone who knows us and yet still loves us and who wants for us more than we could ever hope or imagine.
As we turn to face 2020 with all our hopes, dreams and fears, let’s do so trusting that whatever it holds for us, there is someone who is with us to share the joy and the pain, the opportunities and the disappointments.
Someone who understands our lot and who already shares it with us.
Here’s to the God who is with us.
The Right Rev Susan Brown is minister of Dornoch Cathedral and the former moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
