I have just seen an advert for a red Christmas jumper with the words “Yule Never Walk Alone”. Now, I know this is a bit of a niche interest – basically only Liverpool fans are likely to buy one – but it hits the Christmas spot for me.
Why? Because Christmas, once you strip it back to the core, is the fulfilment of God’s promise to come among us as one of us. This is why we are invited to celebrate the fact that whatever the world and life can throw at us, we never have to walk alone.
Fantasy? Vague spiritual nonsense for the gullible?
Not so. The people of Jesus’s time had no illusions. They lived under oppressive military occupation by the Roman Empire. Life was cheap – people crucified or summarily snuffed out – every day of the week. No human rights legislation applied, no right to life, liberty or happiness. Their longing was for liberation, but the quick fix never seemed likely to come. Messiah was supposed to solve the problems, but the power of the violent never dimmed.
And there lay the problem. How are you supposed to spot the presence of God in a confusing world when he refuses to give us what we want? We look for the giant saviour, but are offered a mere baby in a feeding trough. We long for security, but find only this same baby hunted at birth by a paranoid ruler’s troops. We seek our salvation in things going our way, but discover in this baby that it is OK not to be in control of the world. And it is into this dark night in an obscure part of the Middle East that God comes among us.
Small. Vulnerable. Unprotected from all that real life brings. God, in person, whispering into the silence of fear or bewilderment that we are not alone.
So, after Christmas we are invited to grow up with the baby we read about in the gospels; journey with the man and his friends; live with the hopes and expectations, fears and suspicions of his close society; Christmas is the beginning of surprise, not the end.
Happy Christmas! Yule never walk alone.