Christmas

Many of us will know that the calendar date that we celebrate Christ’s birth, 25th December is determined not by the actual date of Jesus’ birth, 2000 years ago, which we have no access to, as it has been lost in the sands of time. Instead, it is determined by pagan festivals of the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere, which normally occurs between the 21st and 22nd December. These pagan feasts, celebrated the sun’s rebirth. These feasts were celebrated on the shortest day of the year because from the 21st December onwards the days would start becoming longer. These feasts therefore celebrated the daylight beginning its journey towards dominating the darkness of night. When Christianity first came to the pagan lands of Rome and Germany, these pagan festivals that worshipped the Sun-god were reappropriated by Christians to worship the birth of the Son of God. The words of John the Baptist “He must increase and I must decrease” were used to construct a beautiful symmetry between the feast of the birth of John the Baptist on 24th June that occurs close to the Northern Hemisphere summer solstice, after which the days start getting shorter, and the birth of Christ on 25th December, after which the days start getting longer.

Our Christian liturgical year has thus been constructed around the natural cycles of the Northern Hemisphere. The natural alternation between darkness and light has been leveraged to underline the theological message of Christ as the light of the World. Christians in the Northern Hemisphere spend the whole of Advent literally walking through the darkness (often making the commute to work or school in total darkness, which, in summer months, would be made in the light.) This darkness can become rather oppressive and depressing – and so it is appropriate that just after the darkest day of the year, Christians gather to celebrate the arrival of Christ the Light of the World. Christmas becomes a resolute fight back against the darkness, which is where Christmas lights and shiny Christmas decorations take their meaning. Christians (like pagans of old) gather to feast and give gifts in the middle of winter in order to lift their spirits out of the depression of the darkness that surrounds them and celebrate the victory of Light over Darkness. Nature responds accordingly, as after Christmas the light starts to come back and dominate the darkness.

This is all very well for those who live in the Northern Hemisphere. But what about those of us who live in the Southern Hemisphere? We have the exact opposite trajectory going on, as after Christmas the days start becoming shorter. Moreover, in the tropics, the alternation between light and darkness is not so stark as to really impact our emotional state. Indeed, in the tropics, the passing of the seasons is not measured so much by the alternation between light and darkness, but rather by the alternation of wet and dry. The waiting for light and warm in the heart of winter in the Northern Hemisphere might find its equivalent in the Southern Hemisphere in the waiting for the first rains that bring relief to a hot, dry and parched land. Our true natural advent is the period in October where we suffer under a scorching sun that at times bring with it the promise of rain in dark ominous clouds which then fail to deliver on their promise and simply dissipate away. Our longing for the rains is only really fulfilled on that day when we can finally smell the rain just before the heavens open and drench the thirsty hot land. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief that the hot scorching October days are finally over and we cross our fingers that the rains that have started will now continue and assure us the water we need for our crops and dams. If we wished to align our celebration of Christmas with natural cycles in the tropics of the Southern Hemisphere, it would almost be better to celebrate Christmas with the coming of the first rains. For by the time we reach the end of December, if the rains have held, the land is well-watered and everything is lush and green, all we are waiting for is a rich and bountiful harvest.

But whether we are helped by the natural cycles or not in our expectant welcome of our Saviour’s birth, it is the attitude of being able to rejoice at the slightest signs of hope that this feast nurtures in us. It strikes me that as Mary, Joseph and the shepherds rejoiced at the birth of Jesus, they had no idea what the salvation he would bring them would look like. They had to hold onto the small signs of hope they had been given that promised that Jesus would be their Redeemer. But they would have to wait a full 30 years for them to start seeing evidence of the new life that Jesus had come to inaugurate through his proclamation of the Kingdom of God and his miracles. They would have to wait even longer to witness Jesus triumphant victory over death and sin through his crucifixion and resurrection. This is a long time to keep hope alive and nurture it. Of course, the Christmas story contains enough of the miraculous to give a hint of what was to come in Jesus’ public ministry. Nevertheless, it was not in anyway a guarantee of the bountiful outpouring of God’s grace that Jesus’ later life would be. There were seeds of hope, primarily in the messages of the angels: Gabriel who appeared to Mary, the angel of the Lord who appeared in a dream to Joseph and the angels who appeared to the shepherds. As we saw in last Sunday’s homily, messages from angels are often not sure-fire events which provide such blindly clarity that all doubts are instantaneously dispelled. I’m sure that Jesus’ birth in a stable would have left both Joseph and Mary scratching their heads and wondering if these were really the circumstances that portended the birth of a great King. The events of Mary and Joseph’s life would have given them ample opportunity to complain and doubt the promises of God made to them both. But Mary chose to store up the signs of hope and treasure them in her heart. By amassing a treasure trove of God’s faithfulness in her heart she was able to Mary was able to keep hope alive and bat away the causes for doubt and anxiety.

It is easy for us in hindsight to be filled with great hope at the birth of Jesus, because we know what Jesus turned out to be. It is perhaps a lot less easy for us to be filled with hope about events in our own futures and in the future of our world. This Christmas, we are called to identify the small signs of hope that we are sent by God that portend a brighter future for us. It may be a small reconciliation in a relationship that has been difficult for a long time – a slightly warmer Christmas message from an estranged friend or relative. It may be the promise of a job interview in the New Year, or the offer of a friend to help out with an intractable problem that has been weighing on our mind for a while. In each of these instances we have the choice either to hold onto the hope that these small signs give us or to give into fear and think about all the things that can go wrong . We persuade ourselves that we are being realistic and preparing ourselves for the worst. But just as the first rains fill us with hope for a good rainy season, so too we are called to identify the small signs of hope in our world that can lead us to believe in the plans that the Lord has for us: “plans to proper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future” (Jer 29:11).

Questions for reflection

1. How do the cycles of nature in the part of the world that I live in invite me to an attitude of hope?
2. What are the little signs I can identify in my life as gifts from the Lord that lead me to greater hope about the things that worry me?