Christmas quiz – who sang “I wish it could be Christmas every day” (cue the sound of sleigh bells and children singing)? Bonus point – which year? (Answer below*)
Are you ready for the Christmas soundtrack – piped in the shops, looped on the radio, blasted by someone in your home, perhaps stirring old festive memories? Whatever our sentiment about Christmas being every day, it is upon us.
Christmas – the Power and the Glory of it. Ah, but we’ve done that bit of the Lord’s Prayer already. How about a hybrid Christmas song, then – “I wish it could be Christmas every day! Forever and ever! Amen!” The secular meets the sacred.
Perhaps this mixture isn’t so daft, for we know Christmas is a hybrid – a mishmash of culture, commercialism, religion, tradition. Sometimes the mishmash is glorious, sometimes painful. A child’s words perfectly captured such cultural collision (non-Christmas-y) in the comedy series ‘Outnumbered’. Livewire 6-year-old Karen buries a dead mouse in the garden, solemnly saying, “Dust to dust, for richer or for poorer, in sickness or in health, may the force be with you, because you’re worth it. Amen and out.”
Our TV ads scrap over the collision that is Christmas. From one, the traditional voice: “Christmas is a time that’s sweeter when you share.” There’s the bold challenger: “Do only what you want.” Or the middle ground perhaps, “Let your traditions grow.”
Of course Christmas is a mishmash – it was from the start. Roman census meets Jewish genealogy. Unmarried mother collides with traditional family values. Aristocratic magi mingle with low-caste shepherds. Angel harmonies blend with bleating sheep. The infinite God in an infant. Time and space, history and eternity, heaven and Earth, swirl in a stable.
Let’s put all the mishmash in a pan – historic and present. Let’s put it on the stove and boil it down to its concentrate. What is its essence? “Love came down at Christmas,” as the carol goes. The Christmas concentrate? Love. As one of those adverts goes, “I would do anything for love.” And He did.
Our year’s journey through the Lord’s Prayer is ended. But as for the magi, the end of a journey may be a new beginning, as the year wraps round. The closing words of ‘I wish it could be Christmas every day’? “Why don’t you give your love for Christmas.” And He does. Forever and Ever. Amen.
Rev David Carrington
* Wizzard, 1973 (and every year since…)
