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Good King Wenceslas looked out
In October, we went on a nostalgia trip to Middlesbrough. We do that from time to time to remind us of our roots. It was already Christmas. It was just like Christmas in the good old days; the days of standing, sodden, in the pouring rain, waiting for a bus, only to find that every one was packed full of shoppers from out of town and none would stop. The days of finding it impossible to move, let alone breathe, in the shops. The days of parking the car in the supermarket car park and being unable to leave again because of the traffic.
Ah, the three months of Christmas, the jollity, the bonhomie, the festive feeling. It warms the hearts of some people so much that they feel the need to cover their houses with fairy lights and the kind of tasteless tat that would make Blackpool look underdressed. We can relax and unwind and feel at one with the world. The fact that a third of the population of the planet are undernourished can pass us by. We can eat, drink and be merry, and consume Turkish Delight until we vomit. Our supermarkets will be churning out tinny renditions of such religious classics as “Jingle bells” to put us in the mood to shop until we drop, buying food that we will never eat and fuel that we will never remember drinking. Joy to the world!
Somewhere in this frenzy of gorging, boozing and frantic spending there is a religious significance. Maybe Mary didn't ride into Bethlehem on a donkey, maybe there was no stable, not in the Gospel accounts anyway, even though the popular imagination seems to have inserted them into folklore, like it has done with S. Nicholas of Myra in a red dressing gown and anachronistic wellington boots. Maybe there was no ox and no ass and no bonny ivy tree, but there was the Nativity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, God become incarnate.
As soon as the retail outlets stop assaulting our ears with that nauseating, quasi-religious, Muzak, we Christians can breathe a sigh of relief and celebrate properly the coming of our Lord. The best thing about Good King Wenceslas was that he looked out on the Feast of Stephen. By that time the January Sale posters were up and the world, hardly noticing that Advent had only just finished and Christmass was but one day old, had started queuing at the shops again.
May God bless you all, Fr Allan
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