As society becomes more secular and the churches continue to lose their influence in many aspects of life, more and more people are going to learn about the Christmas story not through sermons, prayers and Gospel readings, but through hearing carols and Christmas songs, in television drama or in the cribs in shop window displays.
None of this means that the Christmas story is losing its significance or its relevance, nor is it losing its ability to rekindle the core values and priorities of peace, goodwill and love among ordinary people.
If anything, these key values are finding new ways of being expressed, being spread and of being integrated into hearts and minds.
Since last Christmas, there have been constant, – daily – reminders of how we live in an increasingly fragile world, and how the core details of the narrative of the nativity are in greater need of being heard and told afresh.
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Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine calls on the world to heed again the plea in the Christmas carols for peace on earth and goodwill to all. Once again, there is no prospect of a Christmas truce in that war. Peace still seems some way off in this dreadful conflict.
The continuing devastating conflict engulfing Israel, Gaza and the West Bank has added poignancy in these weeks to any reminders that this land is the location of the first Christmas.
This year, for the first time in 19 years, Christmas and Chanukah fall on the same day, and the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights begins on the evening of Christmas Day. But light and enlightenment are dim and distant qualities that seem to be lacking in this conflict, and the people of Gaza and the remaining hostages from Israel are people who live in darkness and in the shadow of death.
It is long past time that they are freed from this terrible burden. Talks now underway on a long-overdue ceasefire in Gaza must be brought to a successful conclusion.
Recent events in Syria are a reminder that the Christmas story is a story shared by all people in that region. When Syrians celebrated the fall of the Assad regime at Friday prayers on December 13th, they converged in their thousands on the Umayyad Mosque, also known as the Great Mosque of Damascus. The Minaret of Jesus is the tallest of the three minarets of the mosque, and Muslims and Christians alike revere it as the burial place of the head of John the Baptist.
The story of John the Baptist is central to the Christmas story, but John the Baptist is also mentioned five times in the Qur’an, and he remains a key figure for the peacemakers who engage in Christian-Muslim dialogue.
In his popular hymn “Dear Lord and Father of Mankind”, John Greenleaf Whittier locates Christ’s ministry and miracles “by the Syrian Sea.” Syria is a central location in understanding the beginnings of Christianity: Saint Luke’s Gospel dates the first Christmas to the time “while Quirinius was governor of Syria” (Luke 2: 2); later, Saint Paul experiences his dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus (Acts 9: 1-22); and it was in Antioch, long a part of Syria, that the disciples are first called “Christians” (Acts 11: 25).
Although most Muslims do not celebrate Christmas, the birth of Jesus is described in two places in the Qur’an: Sura 3 (Al Imram) and Sura 19 (Maryam), and in popular Muslim belief the second coming or return of Jesus is to take place at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.
In his poem ‘I heard the bells on Christmas Day’, the American poet Henry Wordsworth Longfellow bows his head in despair at a time of civil unrest and war and grieves: “There is no peace on earth … For hate is strong/ And mocks the song/ Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
At this Christmas time, many are uncertain about Europe’s political stability – emphasised in the political uncertainty in France and Germany and compounded by the rise in the far-right across the Continent -– and many, too, fear the prospect of a second Trump presidency.
Perhaps these fears and uncertainties find resonances in the time and place of the first Christmas story, a land torn by war, oppression and violence and ruled by despotic monarchs and governors, from Caesar Augustus and the capricious Herod to the self-serving Pilate.
Yet the Christmas carols in supermarkets and shops and on the streets bring “tidings of comfort and joy” and urge us all to “fear not” for peace and goodwill to all are at the heart of the Christmas message. They show that rulers, personified in the magi or three kings, can bring surprising gifts even to the lowly-born.
Christmas always brings hope and the promise of justice and peace, even if at times like this hope can seem in short supply. Longfellow’s despair ends when he hears the bells peal again, “more loud and deep”, and he concludes:
“God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men.”