Christmas Day message: Northampton's Father Oliver Coss reflects on the meaning of December 25th

Every so often some fool holds a ‘Winterval’ festival or sends a card with ‘Seasons Greetings’ written on the front, and we have to have a debate about whether Christmas is being cancelled.

Culturally, Christmas begins sometime in late August when, nestled among the Halloween and Back to School things, a riot of tinsel starts with a glimmer and gradually fills our shops.

Instances of ‘Whamageddon’ (a term which describes the unfortunate circumstance of hearing Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’) are getting earlier and earlier, while a populace that’s feeling the pinch needs more carefully to spread the cost of it all.

For observant Christians, Christmas begins with glimmers of a promise on Advent Sunday (which this year was the December 4), and bursts into joy and light in the night of Christmas Eve, as churches – often lit by many candles - sing carols, place the image of the infant Jesus into their Nativity scenes, beginning twelve days of great celebration.

At heart, the Christmas story reinforces the reality that Christmas – the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ – isn’t made by the celebrations we hold, but by God who sends his Son into the world for love of mankind. Where our Christmas is built on that, it will take the comparatively simple challenges of the present and overturn them: where there’s less to spend, it reminds us of the gift that money can’t buy; when our plans fall apart, there’s reassurance that Christ’s coming occurred when people weren’t ready for it and yet God accomplished peace through it; when life gives us desolation in place of celebration, these tidings of comfort and joy persist.

In the holy city of Bethlehem, the city in which Jesus was born, there will – on account of the terrible war raging in Israel-Palestine – be fewer celebrations this year. The huge gatherings that famously take place at the Church of the Nativity will be scaled back and restrained. In Gaza, I imagine the hundreds of Christians – constituting the main part of the Christian minority in the Strip – presently sheltering in their church will (barring a miraculous, if evasive, ceasefire) still be there.

It reminds me of a Christmas carol about the Angels’ song on the night of Jesus’ birth, and how it is so easily drowned out by the noise of the world: “And man, at war with man, hears not The love-song which they bring; – Oh hush the noise, ye men of strife, And hear the angels sing!” In places of relative peace in the world, it will be for us to add our songs to those that will still be sung by Gazans and Ukrainians, and so many others living through violence, remembering that Christ was not born into a scene from a Christmas card, but into the fullness and reality of human life.

Christmas is a gift that cannot be cancelled or taken away. It cannot be earned or confiscated. Though humankind has repeatedly rebelled, and turned down difficult, dark, and dangerous paths, its message eternally persists: ‘peace on the earth, good-will to men, from heaven’s all-gracious King’.

So half-an-hour before midnight on Christmas Eve, we’ll gather in All Saints, plunging the church into darkness and silence, and listen for ourselves, never losing hope that the world might listen with us and hear the angels sing.

I pray that peace and joy will be the gift you and all those you love receive this Christmas.

You’re welcome at All Saints’ Church at 10.30am on Christmas Day.