My Christmas bingo card is almost at full house. People complaining about shops starting to sell their festive ranges too early? Check. The Christmas TV advert from a well-known retailer somehow being news? Check. A playlist of irritatingly catchy tunes unchanged from 1979 piped through every enclosed public space? Check. Charity card shops popping up in church halls? Check.
My last unmarked number was the obligatory outrage at a local authority “banning” Christmas in one way or another. But ten seconds’ research was enough to find “Portsmouth City Council ‘Bans’ Christmas Decorations”. House!*
These storms in teacups often prompt another festive tradition: debating the “true” meaning of Christmas and whether it is vacuous without its Christian dimension. The debate is a bit silly, in the sense that Christmas today has clearly accrued multiple meanings. It is a holy Christian period, a pagan midwinter festival and a secular time for family celebration and a break from work. I’m more interested in how people view the Christmas meanings they don’t sign up to. Can we see the value in them even if we don’t agree with them?
In that spirit, I went to advent Evensong at Winchester Cathedral. As an atheist, I know that religion cannot be reduced to a set of literal beliefs and that there may be value in its rituals and symbols, even if its creeds are false. Surely there would be something here to move my soul, even if I don’t literally have one?
Well, no, as it turns out. I can see that there is something appealing in the idea that the divine could intervene in the lives of mortals to bring them redemption from their suffering. But the hope that the Christmas story offers seems to me to be so implausible that it says a lot about the depths of human desperation that anyone would take heart from it. I know that might sound dismissive, disdainful or disrespectful, but bear with me and I think you’ll see that my impression is closer to a devout Christian point of view than you might think.
The service started badly when we were welcomed into the service by being told that “In sorrow and penitence we confess our failures and shortcomings, and seek pardon for those sins which frustrate his redemptive purposes and hinder the advent of his reign of love.” In Christianity, the need for salvation comes not from the parlous state that our creator has left us in, but from our own failures. Psychologically, I wonder if this is a masterstroke. Life has been hard for almost every human who has lived and to believe it is pointlessly, randomly so can be hard to bear. Believing that it is our own fault at least gives some rationale for it, and a reason to serve the only being who can save us from it.
But what struck me most was the weakness of the promise of the “vision of God’s perfect kingdom which is the end of all our strivings and the consummation of God’s loving purposes for us.” The service says that “he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts,” “He hath put down the mighty from their seat,” and “the rich he hath sent empty away.” But Jesus did none of these things. His kingdom, he told his followers, was not of this world and he urged them to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. He left the rich and powerful in the same place as he found them.
Similarly, the service said he “hath exalted the humble and meek” and “filled the hungry with good things.” But aside from one miraculous meal by Galilee, he may have sung the praises of the poor and meek but he did nothing to make them wealthier or stronger.
In short, Christianity plugs into our discontent as a sorry species whose mortal lives are full of pain and toil, but it pins the blame for this on us while promising a way out from it without giving us any evidence that it can deliver. To believe all that, you need faith that defies reason. And far from being a deal-breaker, that seems to be Christianity’s deal-maker. Believers sign up by accepting that only a leap of faith will do it.
That’s why the incredulous view from the outside and the astonished one from the inside are two sides of the same coin. The non-believer finds it all unbelievable and the believer agrees: what happened at Christmas was a miracle, which means to believe it you need a faith that defies everything we know about how the universe works. And when Jesus died on the cross, his mission looked liked a failure. It takes belief in the resurrection to be convinced that it wasn’t.
A week after Evensong, I went to Brandon Hill in Bristol in a vain attempt to see the sun rise on the shortest day. A small group of what I assumed to be neopagans were also there, burning sage and channelling the four energies of the North, the East, The South and the West. Like the Evensong service, their incantations and rituals could also seem ridiculous to others but I find them more adaptable to my somewhat ratiocentric worldview than Christian beliefs. It is easier to adopt a practice based on the undeniable fact of the risen sun than it is to do something based on the incredible claim of the risen Son.
I like to follow nature’s cycles as framework to meditate on the preciousness and fragility of life. Even talk of the energies of the compass points can make metaphorical sense. It seems there is a great deal of variety in interpreting what these symbols are but it could be useful to dwell in turn on new beginnings (East), the energy of action (south), letting go (west) and the wisdom of the elders (north). (I was, however, very amused that the website I used to look these up seamlessly marries its avowed spirituality with capitalism, as a message quickly popped up saying “Get 10% Off Your First Order!”)
The meaning of Christmas is for me closer to the pagan than to the Christian. The turning of the seasons is a natural phenomenon, which reminds us of brute facts about the cycles of life and death, ageing and mortality. When we look forward to the return of summer, we do so with good reason, but with the melancholic knowledge that the passing of each year also leaves us with one less to live. But I would never claim it as the one true meaning. Others have their own which no one has right or reason to deny them.
In the Evensong service, it is said “Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord.” In the end, however much faith we have and however rational we try to be, we are all fumbling in the dark, looking for some kind of light. It would be cruel to wish to snuff out the glow anyone finds, whether in a Bethlehem manger or on the solstice horizon. We should follow the example of Jesus better than many of this followers do, not judging others and treating all our neighbours the same, whatever their creed.
Whatever we believe, at least we can all rally around the universal call for peace and good will to all humanity. So I can say with sincerity, may you have a happy Christmas, whether you call it Christmas or not.
* These stories invariably turn out to be grossly misreported. In this case the council had banned wreaths being hung on the doors of flats, not to avoid offending non-Christians, but because of the fire risk. Given the Grenfell Tower tragedy a few years ago, when 70 people were killed in a fire at the local authority run building, this seems more like sensible caution than “political correctness gone mad”.