A View From The Vicarage - December
Dear Friends
In the bleak midwinter?
As I write this the country is enduring a spell of unseasonably warm weather which is entirely confusing many of the spring flowers in the garden. The prospect, that the winter of 2020/21 will be meteorologically a long hard “bleak” winter seems rather unlikely to say the least.
Irrespective of what the meteorologists tell us about the weather that we will/will not endure over the next few months, I think that for a great many people this will feel a very bleak midwinter indeed. As the coronavirus still rages leaving behind it a tale of misery and destruction many of the things which give light and colour to the season will be abandoned and potentially forbidden as this extraordinary and unprecedented year reaches its equally unpredictable finale.
Too many homes and families across our community, our country and indeed our world will be minus loved family members who’ve either succumbed to covid-19 or indeed other conditions. The empty space at the table for them will inevitably diminish the sparkle and joy of Christmas.
Other families will also be celebrating Christmas apart from loved ones because of regulations designed to reduce contact between different households. For them too, Christmas 2020 will feel decidedly different.
We must also not forget to mention those individuals and families whose income has reduced dramatically during the course of this tumultuous year.
For all of these and for so many others this will probably seem an extremely bleak Christmas indeed denuded of many of the elements of the celebration which make it feel like a glittering jewel among the dark months of winter.
But, all of that, of course is only part of the story. Let’s return to the meaning at the heart of Christmas the precious golden truth which underpins and undergirds all of the rest. The story told in a multitude of nativity plays from St. Francis of Assisi until 2020.
The birth of a child ostracized from the rest of society, born in obscurity raised as a nonentity but who went in to change the world.
If we peer through the tinsel and the baubles, if we forget about turkey and mince pies, we find that at the heart of Christmas is domestic but also a cosmic story; a very human story but also an entirely transcendent and eternal one.
However, our Christmas festivities may be curtailed or constrained this year the eternal truth at the heart of Christmas remains undiminished and undimmed that as John Betjeman put it: “God became man in Palestine and lives today in bread and wine”. The story of the birth of a child, the story which all of the carols and all of the readings celebrate. The birth of someone whether you accept his divinity or not changed the lives of humanity more profoundly than anyone else in human history.
Let’s use Christmas 2020 to remind ourselves of the universal truths of Christmas; to rejoice in what we can do rather than grieving for what we can’t. The bleak mid winter of that carol was transformed by the glow of the Christ child and if we place our trust in him and as individuals and as a country follow his teaching and behave as he taught and exemplified then not just the winter but all of our lives will feel considerably less bleak, coronavirus not withstanding.
Jean joins with me to wish you a happy and blessed Christmas and God’s most abundant blessings throughout 2021.
Ben