Endure. Love. Give.
Ian At Christmas
By Ian McDonald
Stabroek News
December 25, 2004
Christmas is not looked upon kindly by all. That most misanthropic of misanthropes, Ebenezer Scrooge, before his fearful experience with the three spirits and subsequent reformation, loathed Christmas, finding the love and goodwill and giving of gifts pure humbug. And who can forget the furious shout of the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves: "Cancel the kitchen scraps for the lepers and orphans! No more merciful beheadings! And, above all, call off Christmas!"
More seriously, the British theologian Don Cupitt is dismayed, if not disgusted, by what he sees as the loss of the true meaning of Christ's birth, the obscuring of the mystery and miracle, in what Christmas has become. "Christmas", he has said, "is the Disneyfication of Christianity." He is not alone in such views and this Christmas, I have no doubt, there will be thunderous sermons from a thousand Church pulpits lamenting the removal of Christ from Christmas and condemning the shallow festivities which mask the deep significance of the birth of Jesus. And, of course, there is truth in the sermons which are, after all, delivered from altars over which hang crosses on which the figure of Christ in anguish should remind us that Christmas, in its origins and at its core, is not really about festivity and gifts and decorations and lights and fun and feting, but about a bare manger where cattle made room for the Christ Child to start him on his long, world-changing journey to Golgotha.
But I am not at all sure Jesus would have delivered a sermon such as these in his time or if he returned. Nor do I believe he would be sorry to see the festivity and the presents and the lights and the singers and the fun. All I read of this God or prophet or genius-leader, as you wish, one thing you can tell he was by no means a spoilsport. I think he would like a great deal of what he would see if he were to walk again among us at Christmas time. Above all, he would not ever begrudge the children their joy and gifts and excitement.
He might indeed take a theologian like Dr Cupitt aside and remind him that Disney has given an immense amount of pure happiness and joyful excitement to countless children over the years and that he, the Christ, wouldn't at all mind quite a lot of Disneyfication in the Church. Of course what he would insist on is that Christmas joy and celebration should be spread among all the children and not just the privileged. That after all is what Disney has achieved.
So let us not be intimidated by the somber precepts of theological purists who see in Christmas simply the occasion to worship the Sacred Child, but let us take the opportunity also to celebrate an eternally wonderful event by bringing joy within our families and among our friends and for as many as possible who would otherwise lack the means to celebrate and enjoy and for a while brush away life's shadows.
I love Christmas in our home and our sons treasure it and receive memories they will keep all their lives. It is a Christmas created largely by the love, giving nature and hard work of my wife - in the gifts that begin to be purchased early for family and friends and the great number who deserve our thanks and blessings, in the home where the new curtains and colourful tablecloths and bedspreads are put in place early and where the lovingly decorated tree and myriad of Christmas ornaments make a festival of all the rooms, in the kitchen where the fragrances of Christmas begin to spread in the air from late November, in the garden where the trees and plants and hedges and orchid house bloom with flowers of light as night falls, in mid-December. It adds a bonus to the Christmas desire to share, when cars stop for a while and children emerge to see the lights in the garden.
At Christmas I read, as I have always done, T. S. Eliot's Journey of the Magi, the greatest poem ever written about Christmas. Every line from its beginning ("A cold coming we had of it,/just the worst time of the year") to its end ("We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,/But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,/With an alien people, clutching their gods./I should be glad of another death") is crafted with infinite care and I have come to think of this poem after so many readings as one of the most beautiful ever written. But there is another poem, by U A Fanthorpe, hardly known at all, about a sidelined if not exactly belittled character in the great and sacred drama of Christmas, which I have grown to like very much.
I am Joseph
I am Joseph, carpenter,
Of David's kingly line,
I wanted an heir; discovered
My wife's son wasn't mine.
I am an obstinate lover,
Loved Mary for better or worse.
Wouldn't stop loving when I found
Someone Else came first.
Mine was the likeness I hoped for
When the first-born man-child came.
But nothing of him was me. I couldn't
Even choose his name.
I am Joseph, who wanted
To teach my own boy how to live.
My lesson for my foster son:
Endure. Love. Give.