25th December
Christmas, Interrupted
Carols and crackers, pigs-in-blankets and presents. That’s what I especially look forward to at Christmas. What about you?
Most of us have Christmas traditions. They will vary from family to family, from culture to culture, but most involve decorations, music, food, festivities, presents, people and places. We like these things and normally don’t want them to change. But if we love them too much, we can end up missing what’s at the heart of Christmas. That’s why we sometimes need our Christmas to be interrupted.
This has happened to me a number of times.
Recently an asylum-seeker from an oppressed country joined us for Christmas lunch and told us how Christmas in his country had to be celebrated secretly.
One year, when I was a boy, my parents decided on Christmas day that we’d respond to the call to take caravans to Italy to help homeless earthquake victims. Two days later we were on the road for the adventure of a lifetime.
Another Christmas my immediate family – me, Sam and our 5 boys – all went down with a 24-hr bug and had to cancel plans with others, so instead we had a pyjama day at home, wrapped in duvets, and celebrated Christmas simply, eating beans on toast.
These kinds of interruptions are memorable and often good. They shake us from our comfortable celebrations and take us back to the first Christmas, when God interrupted human history, and sent the very best thing he had, his son, Jesus Christ. Not in power, but in weakness. Not in splendour but in frailty. So we might be forever changed.
So this Christmas, be open to divine interruptions. Interruptions that take you back to Bethlehem. Back to the manger. Back to Christ our Lord.
