Feel like cancelling Christmas?

 

Feel like cancelling Christmas? Maybe the early surge of Christmas mania leaves you feeling cold - perhaps sad. This year's Christmas celebrations are bound to be tinged with a certain degree of fear, if not disappointment. Can I hug my grandchildren? Well - no not in my case because our borders are tightly closed and they live across the sea. But can anyone hug their grand-anythings? Nobody wants to be the one who passed on the dreadful Covid-19 bug to the older members of their families. The British government may be declaring a 5-day break from the tightest of rules, but we all know that a spike of infections in January is no way to begin a 'happy New Year'.

And what of Christmas worship celebrations? No carol singing inside? Social distancing for any parents attending what Nativity displays may be put on? As the Prime Minister said 'T'is the season to be jolly careful!'

So do we cancel Christmas then? Not at all. This weekend we enter the season of Advent with perhaps more reasons than any since the Second World War to refocus our thinking on what really matters about the celebration. Of course we all love the trimmings, the glitter, the sense of being together, the food etc, but back of it all is the message that Christ came into a world full of trouble and sorrow. Born into obscurity, at a time of enemy occupation and oppression, to a couple facing major upheaval within a very short time of his birth.

The Christmas story is good news, but it is set against a backcloth of very bad news. All the children under 2 years of age in the district where Jesus was born were slaughtered by troops on a vicious blood-fest. He was only saved by his parents fleeing to an Egyptian refugee camp over the border. So, if you feel like Advent 2020 is coming at the wrong time completely, take heart. That's why Jesus came. To turn our despair to hope, and our distress to comfort and joy.