KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 3 January
“Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart”
The world divides between those who wish Christmas was over and done with and those who wish Christmas would never end. It can seem to be altogether too much, too much fuss and bother, too much tinsel and wrap, too much food and drink, too much travel; in short, the problem of too much of a good thing, perhaps.
There have been times when Christians themselves were anti-Christmas, particularly those of a Puritan persuasion. At Harvard in the 17th century, for instance, classes were held on Christmas day and in England during the Cromwellian Inter-regnum, Christmas was forbidden to be celebrated since it was viewed as mere superstition and “painted-over paganism”. Even earlier in the 16th century, the reaction in Cornwall to the first Book of Common Prayer (1549) was to dismiss it as being “like a Christmas game,” suggesting something frivolous and not serious, not holy. How to think about Christmas is not entirely a new concern.
Yet to think about it is the main feature of the Feast of Christmas in the Christian understanding however much it has been overwhelmed by a host of add-ons. There is a fundamentally intellectual character to the Christmas season liturgically considered. Christmas Eve, for instance, for centuries upon centuries, was not about the babe in the manger but the Word of God Incarnate, signalled in the thunderous words from Hebrews and the Prologue of John’s Gospel. No mention of Bethlehem really.