\u201cChristmas-time is here, by golly,<\/i>
\ndisapproval would be folly,<\/i>
\ndeck the halls with hunks of holly\u2026<\/i>
\nBrother, here we go again!\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
So sang the comic songwriter, Tom Lehrer, and I wonder how many of us feel the same way, at least sometimes.\u00a0 Our nation seems to have a love-hate relationship with Christmas, and this, I am sure, is because of what it has become; an excuse to spend money we don\u2019t have on things we don\u2019t need.<\/p>\n
The pressures applied upon us by society are subtle: \u201cit\u2019s for the kids\u201d, or \u201cour family have always done this.\u201d\u00a0 We must join in or people will assume we are grumpy old Scrooges.\u00a0 Because marketing departments promote Christmas as a time of goodwill and happiness, to opt out of their<\/span> glitzy celebration is to be a miserable killjoy.\u00a0 Because they assert it is a time of peace, any attempt to expose the shallowness of that peace is fraught with danger.\u00a0 Disapproval would be folly <\/i>\u2013 indeed!\u00a0 Our national Christmas celebrations are precious, and to question their validity or helpfulness is to walk a minefield of sensitivities.<\/p>\n And yet I would rather walk that path than by driven by malignant forces of consumerism, materialism and pride.\u00a0 I too want to assert that Christmas is precious, but for strikingly different reasons.\u00a0 Despite what the adverts tell us, and what we may have come to believe, Christmas is not primarily<\/span> a time for families, or for making extravagant gestures highlighting the love we have for one another.\u00a0 It is first and foremost one celebration amongst many which tell of God\u2019s amazing love for us<\/b>.<\/p>\n From eternity, God saw how enslaved we were to the whims of the rich and powerful and to our own foolish pride.\u00a0 He saw we were living only half a life, encumbered by worries, facing an uncertain future and frightened of death.\u00a0 And he stepped in to rescue us from that oppression in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.\u00a0 Christmas is a powerful celebration of God\u2019s first-hand understanding of what it means to be human; in Christ Jesus, God became flesh and made his dwelling among us (John 1:14).<\/p>\n By giving us his Son, God has given us the opportunity of real peace<\/b>; not the \u201cgrit-your-teeth-Aunt-Gertrude-will-be-gone-by-Boxing-Day\u201d kind of peace.\u00a0 In Jesus, he has given us real joy<\/b>; not the plastic-grins of sound-activated dancing flowers or the short-lived, hangover-followed merriness of alcohol.\u00a0 In Jesus he has set us free to be who he created us to be; free from dancing to another\u2019s tune, free to live life in all its fullness with him as our loving Father.<\/p>\n Now that is some Christmas present.\u00a0 And worth celebrating.\u00a0 As we make our plans for this Christmas, amidst the noise of the advertisers who would use us to make money for them, so God is calling us to enjoy his freedom.\u00a0 Will we listen?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cChristmas-time is here, by golly, disapproval would be folly, deck the halls with hunks of holly\u2026 Brother, here we go again!\u201d So sang the comic songwriter, Tom Lehrer, and I wonder how many of us feel the same way, at least sometimes.\u00a0 Our nation seems to have a love-hate relationship with Christmas, and this, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,34,18],"tags":[21,25,29,50,19,27,28,26],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-comment","category-family-life","category-gospel","tag-christmas","tag-consumerism","tag-freedom","tag-gospel","tag-jesus","tag-joy","tag-peace","tag-shopping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions\/120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}