What is Christmas - for you?

Millions are weighing up the risks of COVID, and not just for the elderly, this year but for themselves.  People who have had COVID-19 and are suffering its longer term implications are urging others to take this condition seriously and avoid it. This is difficult when the virus is invisible and airborne. Our natural instinct as social beings, talkers, sharers is to be close and friendly. There is a cost to unnaturally distancing ourselves from others. But distance we must, because this price is too high. 

The notion of 'cancelling Christmas' is promoted in the media as a kind of abomination. They are meaning a large meal, rounds of drinks and parties.  Some see Christmas as a time to adorn their house, make it twinkle with the costliest and prettiest decorations around an overladen table fit for Good Housekeeping Magazine. Others see it as a time to flee from their family and go on a Christmas cruise to the Canaries or fly to the Far East.  These visions of Christmas frame it as a time to over indulge, ideally without a thought for health or for those on the margins. 

But what is Christmas? I had to wrestle with this during many years of lone Christmases in M.E, which due to COVID, this year, has finally been recognised as a real and serious illness.  The NHS is even withdrawing its totally misguided treatment of graded exercise which made so many ill.  Wonders never cease.... 

I could not eat wheat, sugar, mince pies or Christmas pudding. So I had to decide what Christmas actually is -  for me. It is about God intervening in a cold and cruel world and supplying Joy in place of despair. In its no-room-at-the-inn narrative, it is about being inclusive. It is about giving gifts that will sustain those on the margins. If one is eating rich foods and too many drinks, one should at least ascertain whether others have a decent meal, or a present of food, too.  

Christmas is about gifts - reflecting the presents of the Magi, and the gift of Christ.   Charity is central to it, but sadly often less recognised these days.  Without casting aspersions on anyone, in my years of enforced penury, I never once felt anyone even thought about my dire financial situation, or gave me any leeway on giving presents, myself.  So, clearly, there is a toxic attitude of entitlement about presents;  we definitely should reform that.

Christmas cannot be cancelled because like faith, it happens in one's heart.  Charles Dickens was right that Christmas is about becoming more open, more aware, more generous. In essence, it is about imitating the generosity of God in bothering with us.  Not just bothering but engaging; not just engaging, but Coming; not just Coming but Being and Loving and Dying.  Going the extra mile  and three and four and five.

Let's try to use this Christmas to reform Christmas from the runaway, materialistic indulgent booze-up it has become to the most charitable and magical time of year.   Its magic comes from its generosity. 

Since we cannot and should not party this Christmas, let's meditate on its magic, instead.