How to avoid being trite this Christmas

‘And so this is Christmas, and what have you done?’ Not a lot this year, actually. Getting things ‘done’ ceased to be the object from about March onwards in favour of just getting through. So here we are, ‘another year over’, with less than ever to show for it. Goodness knows what my mother’s obscure relations are going to put in their Christmas letters this year. Here’s hoping some second cousins thrice removed somewhere have managed to pass their Grade 3 Piano exam to give us all some good news.

But John Lennon’s is not the only Christmas song that will be sounding a little different this year. (Top marks if you recognise where they’re all from.*) ‘Chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Jack Frost nipping at your nose’ as you sit on your coats on the patio in your Tier Two area. ‘I really can’t stay…’ ‘But baby it’s cold outside…’ ‘I know, but if I come inside that will push us over the rule of six.’ ‘I’m driving home for Christmas, oh I can’t wait to see those faces’ through the kitchen window. ‘Oh I say it’s tough, I have had enough, can you stop the virus please?’

Of course, I’m writing this before publication, so maybe by December the outlook will be considerably brighter. But judging by how things have gone so far, it’s hard to shake the cynicism. It is, for better or worse (but mainly worse), my modus operandi. So much so that this piece got stuck here, at the 250 word mark, for several days. Complaining about a lack of inspiration, I read it out to my younger brother over the phone and he said: ‘See, you’re nearly there. Now all you need to do is write the little blessed thought bit and you’re done.’

And yes, it shouldn’t be too hard to write some slightly trite words about how maybe this will be the year when we realise afresh that Jesus was the reason for the season all along. With Jesus we can ‘have ourselves a merry little Christmas’, whatever the restrictions.

And yes, that’s all true. But in our speaking and writing this December, I wonder if it’s possible to go there a little too quickly.

Because while Christmas definitely is all about Jesus, in a very real sense it’s also about precisely the thing we’ve missed most this year: people. It’s about a triune God inviting people into relationship with Him. It’s about the Son leaving the glory of heaven to be with people. To come close; to come down; to tabernacle among us; to physically take on our flesh and die our death to draw us together into one new humanity. And there’s something profoundly right in the human instinct that celebrating is to be done together; that’s why there’s a whole multitude round the throne in Revelation 7.

This year has shown us many things. But perhaps more than anything, it’s shown us that relationships are the stuff of life; because the author of life is a relational God. The only not good thing about Eden was a man on his own. So there is something deeply not good about being separated from the people we love; or about having lost people we love this past year. Christians don’t have to pretend otherwise; we don’t have to paper over the cracks with garishly cheerful Jesus wallpaper.

The answer to Christmas cynicism is not more sentimentalism. It’s hope. That’s a word that doesn’t deny that things are bad, but insists they will get better – and does so on the basis of good evidence. It is, as I’ve heard the evangelist Rico Tice put it, a joyful expectation for the future, based on true events in the past, which changes everything about my present.

And that’s where Christians sing from a different hymn sheet from the world. As we contemplate a ‘bleak midwinter’, instead of cynicism, we can know the ‘thrill of hope’ that has the power to make a weary world rejoice. One day He will come to make ‘His blessings flow far as the curse is found ’. ‘Hark! The herald angels sing’ the glory of this risen and reigning King, who is a whole year closer to returning than He was last Christmas. And even if we haven’t been able to sing in church for most of this year, we know that the angels of heaven haven’t stopped for a moment.

Rachel Jones is an editor at The Good Book Company and author of several books including Is This It? and Five Things to Pray in a Global Crisis.