Thought for the Week: Seasons greetings?
John Lampen reflects on the season
I believe that most Quakers look forward to Christmas. Once the beautiful leaves have fallen, the end of autumn can be a depressing time. In northern lands, as the cold increases, there is a deep human need to gather round the fire and celebrate our family bonds, our closeness and dependence on one another. It isn’t surprising that so many cultures have special midwinter festivals with lavish food and drink. People need this reassurance. Our traditional practices of bringing foliage into our homes and lighting candles are a distant echo of magical practices that hoped to persuade the sun to come back overhead and the dormant plants to grow again.
What is hateful about the seasonal commercialism is that it corrupts these needs for its own purposes, instead of satisfying them. This changes the coming of Christ into ‘Xmas’, the indulging of ‘Mr X’, the average man, instead of a midwinter festival which simply brings us together in love, joy and hope. I agree with the religious writer David Pawson, who encouraged us to celebrate the solstice if we wish to in the best way we can – but to ‘leave Jesus out of it!’
If Quakers kept holy days, I might suggest we also observed a ‘Greeting Day for the New Born Child’ – on a different date from ‘Xmas’. This would help us to contemplate another narrative, unhistorical but full of archetypal significance. We would remember a pregnant unmarried teenager and the generous man who forgave her and would not break off their engagement; a five-day journey on rough and dangerous roads to an unfriendly town; the delivery of their baby in disgusting conditions and their subsequent escape as refugees. This is a parable of courage and hope in the face of human indifference and cruelty. Such a Christmas could still accommodate many of our traditional carols alongside harsher songs, like Sydney Carter’s ‘Standing in the rain’.
The Christmas myth reminds me of the infinite possibilities present at each birth into this world, with promises which may be realised or unfulfilled. I can wonder at every newcomer as the shepherds did, those men despised by the pious because their job did not allow them to properly observe the religious Law; or like those wise and powerful magi who were brought to something so simple that it was beyond their expectations and understanding – yet they welcomed it. I can say, with the poet Arthur Rimbaud (in Un Saison en Enfer), ‘When shall we go beyond the shores and the mountains, to salute the birth of the new work and the new wisdom, the flight of tyrants and demons, the end of superstition, and be the first to worship Christmas on earth!’
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