PsalterMark

Based on a short address delivered on 22nd December 2024 at QE Park Baptist Church, Guildford, UK. As such it is most appropriate to the UK-based reader.

It was a sunny day in late August, during my summer holiday in North Wales, that I first saw items in a shop specially promoted as Christmas presents. Mercifully, it wasn’t until October that I heard my first Christmas song. I say mercifully because you can have too much of a good thing, and let’s be honest some aren’t that good. I wonder which Christmas song annoys you the most?

A Fairytale of New York by The Pogues, really doesn’t work for me. The lyrics recount a lovers’ tiff as they use demeaning words to describe each other. It leaves me cold as a Christmas song. Sorry, if you beg to differ. At the other end of the language spectrum is Cliff Richard’s 1988 effort. I don’t much like this one either. But it is firmly established in the Christmas canon:

Christmas time, mistletoe and wine
Children singing Christian rhyme
With logs on the fire and gifts on the tree
A time to rejoice in the good that we see

I nice sentiment, but with an approach to rhyming reminiscent of my poor efforts in poetry at Primary School.

The first Christmas pop song I can remember from my childhood was released some 15 years before Cliff’s effort. It follows a more sophisticated poetic form. According to ChatGPT is has a rhyming couplet structure using a playful AABCCB scheme. It is, of course, the true classic I wish it could be Christmas Everyday by Wizzard.

As a young child I really did wish it could be Christmas every day. Life was simple then, Christmas day meant getting up early to get presents and the day seemed to be one long meal. As a teenager I found that Christmas didn’t always live up to expectation. I remember discovering that when it comes to Christmas Pudding and cream you can have too much of a good thing. Even the good things could be annoying when no one wanted to play the new game or listen to the new Mike Oldfield tape.

I learned what we all know, that if we make Christmas about us, it will disappoint. And as billionaires reveal, you can have too much of a good thing. Those that can afford a commercially perfect Christmas every day, end up wanting ever more logs on the fire and gifts on the tree.

It’s amazing how rapidly the commercial Christmas has replaced the traditional conception of Christmas. For over a millennia Christmas was a festival adjacent to a season. What if our ancestors got some things right? What if they understood Christmas better than us? For our forebears, Christmas started at midnight on Christmas Eve. Christmas was a time of feasting and indulgence for twelve whole days as we know from the infamous partridge in a pear tree song. How far have we come since then?

When Wizzard repine for Christmas every day on the radio, or streaming service, they conceive it as a singular Christmas Day over and over again—a sort of festive Groundhog Day. Our ancestors had twelve distinct days of Christmas.

Throughout December it can often feel that commercially and culturally we are living in a pseudo prequel Christmas. This is perhaps especially true if you work in a café or bar. But our forebears marked Advent with seriousness. For them Advent was a season of abstinence and waiting. I’m not sure our culture expects anyone to choose abstinence and waiting.

Abstinence can, sadly, be foisted upon as by personal disaster, and waiting by our beleaguered NHS. But who would choose abstinence and waiting in our age? In my childhood, 50 years ago, we still practiced a semblance of Advent waiting. We were excited by our carboard Advent calendar. It was pinned to the living room wall, elegantly framed by orange and yellow flowery 1970s wallpaper. Every morning my younger sister and I would open a door. The reward a 1 cm by 1 cm glimpse of the first Christmas. By looking back, we were excited about what was yet to come.

Advent calendars have, of course, evolved. By the time I had children aged 4, 6 and 8 the doors revealed chocolates. And there had to be three identical calendars. In our day you can buy Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Taylor Swift, Star Wars or Hotel Chocolat Advent calendars, for example. This year’s Hotel Chocolat calendar costs, so I am told, £80.

I mention all this not to be a killjoy. If you had an advent calendar, I really do hope you enjoyed it. But I invite you to see beyond our pale echoes of Advent and Christmas, to what they point to.

True Advent waiting reflects the brokenness of the age in which we live. In an age of war, climate disaster, crazy politics, growing financial inequality within nations and across the globe, Christians await the Day of Days. We wait as broken people for the Christmas to end all Christmases, when Jesus—no longer a baby of course—ushers in peace, creates a new heaven and a new earth, and opens an age when each person is fixed and made whole.

The Final Christmas will not be a day, nor 12 days, but every day. It will be a series of days in which you can’t have too much of a good thing.