Christmas Day 2004, Cathedral Sung Eucharist
Television news bulletins are a fact of life. They inform, they interpret, they even irritate from time to time. One pattern they frequently follow is to announce a headline, such as a Government initiative, announce the name of the minister who is going to answer questions on it, but first of all go for a public critic. From the very start, a polarized debate is set up, with a choice of two opposing options. There is little room for subtlety and, of course, it’s not a new device at all. It’s one of the oldest rhetorical tricks in the book, because it captures the attention, and – at its best – makes the viewer think. The scenario which the interviewer most dreads is when the two people involved end up actually agreeing. I was once part of such a twosome, and we were ticked off for being too nice!
What kind of news bulletin might we create for 25th December? One ploy is to shrug it all off, because it’s not what is called ‘newsworthy’. It’s just another birth, in not all that unusual circumstances. To place the pregnant mother in the warm, calming atmosphere of domestic livestock, and away from what was probably a communal dormitory in the Bethlehem bed-and-breakfast, was a neat way of dealing with the situation. Whoever the visitors were – nearby shepherds or magi from afar – can be shrugged off as ‘irrelevant’ – that great put-down word. And so on, and so on; until all we are left with is a tiny notice in the local paper, about a northern couple keen to pay the poll tax on family property in the south, and anxious to return home as soon as possible.
So far, so dismissive. Another ploy is to look for the dirt, whether this concerns a traditional event, such as Trafalgar Day (which is going to occupy us in Portsmouth quite a bit next year), or an entirely new episode involving a public figure. A new angle on Joseph, for example, might suggest that he was on the run with his pregnant wife. Perhaps there were rumours of a steamy past from Mary’s school friends. And shepherds were, after all, dodgy customers, not known for getting to synagogue very often because of the unsocial hours of their work. To cap it all, those foreigners with those gifts – they defied health and safety procedures because their country of origin hadn’t signed an international agreement about post-natal visiting.
In a strange sort of a way, this last ploy – hunt the scandal, or, if not, create it – is exactly what we find in Dan Brown’s enjoyable book, ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ about the survival of paganism. But good clean fun as it is, it’s riddled with errors. For example, the Temple Church, London, is not based on the old pagan Pantheon in Rome, but on the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where Jesus was buried. Then, the idea that Jesus married Mary Magdalene is ridiculous. He did have close friendships with people, herself included, as among the first witnesses of the resurrection; but our age will simply have to face up to the fact not every relationship has to be sexual. What this book adds, however, is the recurring desire, even in a supposedly post-Christian world, for a key that will somehow provide an ‘explanation’ to absolutely everything we are here for on this planet, hence all that delightful nonsense at the end about measuring with some kind of code exactly what the future is going to bring.
All of which takes us back to Bethlehem, this ‘house of bread’, which continues to provide sometimes challenging, even irritating nourishment for the whole human race, in a world that is becoming more and more dangerous. And that’s precisely the point about Christmas. The only polarization is between ourselves and God, and Jesus comes to break that down. If Christmas is to be written off altogether as nonsense, we still can’t get away from Jesus and his unique teaching, whatever we make of it. Nor does Bethlehem conceal some scandal, because there is none to find – except perhaps the tragedy that it’s not really safe to visit there any more. And it certainly does not provide some kind of relentlessly worked-out framework for the history of the world that deprives us of our freedom. Instead, Bethlehem throws down a challenge to us to heed its essential message of peace and goodwill, where violence and hatred all too often take over and destroy not just our relationships, but our institutions, our common way of life as well.
But there is one more ingredient to this year’s Christmas which has crept up on us. People – journalists - are asking what it is all about, even when they try to move it to the margins in order to get it off the scene altogether. Attempts to neutralize Christmas come not from those of other faiths but from secularists who find any public ownership of the festival offensive. A debate about Christmas, and much else about Christianity, is a sobering experience, however hard it comes across, because it makes us, all of us, not just bishops, think about what we believe, and how that affects what we stand for. It might help us find a common mean between hitting others with Christianity and giving it a bad name, and apologizing for it and giving it no name at all. God does not depend on public ownership – or positive opinion polls – for himself to exist! But He does invite us to go back to Bethlehem, with the shepherds, the magi, and indeed anyone else, in order to see a new future, a new hope, for a dark, confused, and questing world.
+ Kenneth Portsmouth
