Christmas is not cancelled. I promise. The angel Gabriel will terrify Mary, baby Jesus will be laid in a manger and the shepherds will run through Bethlehem with the good news of great joy for everyone.
Emmanuel will still be ‘God with us’ despite social distancing. In fact, ‘God with us’ will mean all the more this year. The Son of God chose to enter our lockdown, joining us in our struggles by becoming a child in an unsettled family. He gets it.
Families need wonder
Christmas will look different. It could be better. The best Christmas will be when every child and young person in our community celebrates the birth of the Lord. Social distancing, hand gel and risk assessments cannot mask the wonder of Christmas. Your family and all of your community need that wonder, more than ever before. And I’ll say this quietly; families will not miss the carols or even the Christingle services. As a demographic, families are not that fussed about our church traditions. Families do want (and need) what our churches offer: relationship, community, informality, love and an authentic experience of ‘God with us’. So let’s not make this Christmas a limp, disappointing version of last year. In our families, in our churches and in our communities, let’s go all out to find creative ways to celebrate Emmanuel. He chose struggle, being born into poverty, bringing deep peace to desperate hearts. He moved in, joined our bubble and ignored social distancing. Immerse your family in that story this Christmas. Put a sofa in your church and a manger in your living room.
Families want creativity
So let’s start with the challenge. How will we bring the manger into the living room of every family in our community? The goal is the same as last Christmas, except this year we have a blank sheet of paper. Let me give you some ideas.
Be careful of going online or pushing out videos – we’re done with them. We want to see ourselves, our friends and our communities. We probably don’t want to see you in your study (sorry!) Though if you drop off a Christingle kit on my doorstep, I am more likely to watch you explain it. If you drop off a chocolate brownie on my doorstep, I’ll watch anything you tell me to!
We want to be outside with coats, hats and gloves on. We want to be on the village green, in the middle of the football pitch or in the church car park (but don’t make us sit still for too long). We want to walk around our town finding the 24 inspirational advent windows of church families’ homes. We want an immersive experience of the first nativity in the church building. We want the outside of the church building to be a picture of joy and hope with lights dazzling, carols blaring and a brand new Christmas noticeboard telling us what you are offering when everyone else is closing up. We want church to come to our road, with a 20-minute service for three consecutive Sunday (or Thursday) evenings, so we can stand at our front door with our children, singing your songs and seeing that you have come to us when we had decided not to go to you. We want to be left with a simple way of exploring the Christmas story together. We want our church to surprise us with ways to gather across the generations. We want to see lonely elderly folk sitting in the same room smiling as our children don’t quite behave as they should.
Navigating risk
There will be a lot of risk assessments to navigate this Christmas. But we will never eliminate risk. Boris might change everything on 1st December. But our Lord will still be sovereign. Our family traditions may be ruined by this virus. But we need brave, creative leaders to find ways to remind us that if we have Christ at the heart of our Christmas, we have everything.
