In the shadow of Christmas
I often wonder about those "Days of Christmas" and about who (and what) we 'celebrate' in those days that lie in the shadows of Christmas.
Christmas Day ... we celebrate the incarnation, God in human form, the divine breaking through into the realm of mortals. We as say at Midnight Mass:
Welcome all wonders in one sight!
Eternity shut in a span.
Summer in winter, day in night,
heaven in earth and God in man.
Great little one whose all‑embracing birth
brings earth to heaven and heaven to earth.
Boxing Day ... in church-speak December 26th is reserved to mark St Stephen; as the carol goes
Good King Wenceslas last looked out
on the Feast of Stephen
In some countries, no doubt, snow does indeed lay deep and crisp and even. However, this is the day that the celebrates Stephen's death: known as the first martyr for the Christian faith, Stephen was stoned to death after he denounced the religious people as 'stiff necked' and resistant to the Good News of God in Christ. On Christmas Day we celebrate the divine becoming mortal; on Boxing Day we mark the moment when the mortal was embraced by the divine.
St John, Apostle and Evangelist, is celebrated on 27th December (though whether John the apostle is the same person as John the evangelist we're not entirely sure!). Nonetheless, the church reserves this day to commemorate the one who wonders about the Word made flesh and so we deepen our reflections on the relationship between humanity and divinity into something more timeless than one moment in history for the word was made flesh and lived among us, whilst at the same time all things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. More than that, for those who have ears to hear, we are offered an insight into the pain and suffering that Christ will endure and that tomorrow will bring: the world did not know him and his own, and his own people did not accept him.
Then, on the fourth day of Christmas, we are introduced to the travellers , the star gazers, the magi from the east who bring gold for a king, incense of a god and myrrh for a burial to the child Jesus. But that's not the focus of the commemoration on 28th December: for the celebration of the Epiphany we have to wait another nine days. On this day, folded away after celebrating the incarnation, marking the martyrdom and wondering on the word - shrouded by the shadows of Christmas - we stumble on the death, the murder, the execution of somewhere between sixty and two hundred young children on the orders of Herod and as a direct result of the visit of those so-called Wise Men. As many of you will know, the feast day of The Holy Innocents is, for me, one of the most significant yet forgotten, overlooked and ignored days in the Christian calendar; and, if I had my way, I'd move it to autumn and cause it to be marked on a Sunday every year.
In four days we are brought face to face to:
- with God becoming mortal
- with a mortal returning to God
- with the wonder of the word made flesh
- with the brutality that flesh is capable of
Four days in which we wonder about our relationship with God, our relationship with one another and how we live out the love of God to which we are called.
As the Collect for Holy Innocents from the Alternative Service Book (which was criticised for being too political but seems to chime more with the contemporary issues facing both society and the church) puts it:
Heavenly Father,
whose children suffered at the hands of Herod,
though they had done no wrong:
give us grace neither to act cruelly
nor to stand indifferently by,
but to defend the weak from the tyranny of the strong;
in the name of Jesus Christ who suffered for us,
but is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
