You can imagine my surprise when I saw on a billboard the following headline: ‘Satan’s Coming to Town’. I always thought he had more important bad things to do.
Of course, I had mis-read it. It actually said that the story was about ‘Santa’. Far less exciting, but probably more appropriate to the season of Christmas.
But, it did make me think also about why my mind replaced Santa with Satan. Just an anagram? Or something deeper and darker?
Santa, of course, is the benevolent Billy Bunter who is always full of cheer and gets everything wrong in such a way as to end up loved anyway. Satan is the figure who, according to tradition, spend his time trying to seduce us into thinking we are little gods around whom the universe revolves.
Both Santa and Satan are frauds. The darkness of winter might be illuminated by the light of hope, yet the boundless cheerfulness of the red-robed fat man seems unreal when set against the reality of a dark world. Satan, on the other hand, lives a lie and sows the seeds of deception and fantasy that hide us from that same reality.
Christmas shines an inextinguishable light on both of these lies. The baby born in Bethlehem will not turn out to be yet another false messiah, promising what he can never deliver - drugging people into a life of neutered passivity. No, this baby will grow into a man who brings life and hope and healing to people who have had enough of being ground down by the conflicts of the world. Yet, rather than pretending that this is an easy route to love, joy and peace, will tell his followers that following him will involve carrying a cross.
No fantasy. No seduction. No pretence. No lies. No little gods. Rather, an invitation to incarnate commitment - plunging into the heart of a challenging world, but learning that the God who comes among us as one of us knows how we are and will never abandon us.
Many people - including Christians like us - will spend this Christmas in exile, under persecution, maybe wondering where God is. Our brothers and sisters in Sudan, for example. And as we celebrate with carols and cake, we can pray for them - looking through their eyes and finding in their hope the reason for this season: God among us, saying “I am for you.”
Happy Christmas (when we get there)!