Advent this year is completely different to any Advent I have ever known in the past, the statement I keep hearing all the time at the moment relates to “the true meaning of Christmas” and I hear a variety of views on what Christmas is all about “It is about families being together!” some people claim “It is about looking after those who are lonely” others say and the repeated message this Christmas is about bringing joy into the hearts of those who are feeling down.
Several years ago I was talking to a lady from Church who was talking about the true meaning of Christmas “we need to be teaching people the true meaning of Christmas” she said, while bemoaning her dissapointment in the Church primarily and her own family, who seldom attended Church at Christmas “we should be doing all we can to get people to come to Church and enjoy our services!” she proclaimed, Maybe she was right, but it felt as though she was effectively saying “the true meaning of Christmas is doing what I do” and I wasn’t sure whether she was right or not.
For a long time, I thought very much the same as that lady, I remember the days when our chapel was bursting at the seams at the Carol Service, when the Church was packed on Christmas Day and I remember the magic of some of those services and couldn’t understand why all humankind didn’t want to do the same as I did and after that conversation, I reflected on what the true meaning of Christmas is. Of course central to my thinking was the story of the Nativity, but what was that really all about?
Maybe as we approach Christmas 2020, the fact that Mary and Joseph were seperated from their family and their home on the occasion of the birth of their baby, a time when we need others around and those who proclaim that it is a time to be with our families, in a year when many of us have felt the sadness of being estranged, is right. Maybe as we reflect on the visitors to the stable, those who put themselves out to share in the celebration of a new life, we see the ethos of those who want to stand alongside those who are lonely in a new light? And maybe as we look at the gift of the Christchild bringing joy into the world, we see the incarnation in a different light this year.
For me, the words recorded in the Gospel according to St John chapter three verse sixteen, sum up the true meaning of Christmas “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life”