The Church of Ireland
Diocesan Press Release

Many people looking at Christmas 2001 would say - and indeed do say - that what we see around us is not so much glory as glitter and not so much grace and truth as self-absorption and triviality. And so it is routine for the Christmas preacher to remind everyone just how far we have carried the social observance of Christmas away from the great festival of the Incarnation, God with us, God one with us in the person of Jesus Christ. It can even be argued that Christmas has, in the popular imagination at least, been allowed to lapse back into the pagan mid-winter festival that preceded it.

Some of this is of course true. But yet it is worth thinking about what those Christians of the early centuries - who realised the central importance of celebrating with joyfulness the birth of Christ into the world and what that means in history and out of history - were actually doing. What they did in part was to take over an existing time of festivity, and give it the Christian “treatment”. But they did not do this carelessly. This time of year was celebrated in pre-Christian Rome as the festival of the Saturnalia. But the Saturnalia was more than just eating and drinking and being merry. It was the time when everything in the accepted order of things was turned upside down -

• No-one was punished.
• War was outlawed.
• Those of high rank didn’t wear togas but dressed in the same way as everybody else, including their slaves and servants.
• At mealtimes, the servants were often served by their masters. (We still see traces of this in the military tradition that the officers serve the other ranks on Christmas Day).
• During the Saturnalia, all ate and drank and celebrated together, regardless of social standing or wealth.

And so, for a few days, the Saturnalia turned the entire social order upside down.

A world turned on its head, a world turned upside down – this was a message of the Incarnation that the Christians who “Christianised” the earlier festival wished to carry through into Christmas. If God comes to earth to be among us, to become what we are – in the worst as well as the best of the human condition – then everything must be different and must stay different. There are no half measures. The Incarnation is not just a philosophical proposition. It changes everything we are, and everything we see of God and everything we see in those around us. Yes, we believe that we believe in the Incarnation but we are very slow to accept the implications of it. We are to more than believe, we are to live in the Light of the Incarnation.

• God comes to us in Christ as a helpless child. As far back as two months ago, the United Nations warned us that 7.5 million people would need food aid in Afghanistan if they were to survive the winter. How many of those were children? How many have died? How many more will die? And as we celebrate Christmas - God coming to earth as a helpless child - how many people in the Christian west care how many more helpless children will die?
• Here in Ireland, we all feel rather sorry for ourselves that our period of economic prosperity in Ireland is slowing down (if not actually slithering to a halt). Yet during that period of overall prosperity, the proportion of people in this country who were living on less than half the national average household income actually grew considerably.
• There are 50,000 households in Ireland who are on waiting lists for houses and there are over five thousand people in Ireland actually homeless.
• Many of those at present seeking asylum status in Ireland are children. We’re told that Christmas is all about children. But the Irish Refugee Council calculates that nearly 70% of refugees on what is called “direct provision” are unable to buy sufficient for their children’s nutritional needs.
• And at the same time Ireland spends a lower proportion of its Gross National Product on social welfare than any other EU country. Ireland's contribution is less than 20 per cent of Gross Domestic Product compared to an EU average of nearly thirty per cent

“We saw his glory, such glory as befits the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.” The picture around us in our country is not one which is giving glory to God – there is little sign of the Christ-like generosity or truth here either. The Incarnation of Jesus Christ means that God cares for us all, equally and totally. As Christians we cannot accept the barefaced rejection of God Incarnate, seen in the inequality and the injustice that stalk our country.

And yet the glory of Christmas is that you and I are invited again to share in the birthright that is given us in Jesus Christ. It was given to us in our baptism and it echoes through the Christmas story. The story of Christmas is the story of how God enters our lives in the love of Jesus Christ. And we are called to tell that story to the world not only in words – even beautiful words - but also by how we live.

The setting of the Christmas story, not in splendour or finery or luxury but in need and squalor and danger, surely reminds us that glory, grace and truth are to be found not only in times and places of security and comfort, but even more in the times and places of hardship and sorrow.

When someone has a piece of good luck at any time in the year we say that “Christmas has arrived early” for him or her. Many children would certainly love Christmas to last all year! And as followers of Jesus Christ, we - if we are true to our baptismal calling to obey and serve Christ - are called to bring Christmas out beyond the confines of these twelve days, as we strive to hear the cries of God’s other children who live in want and who cry out for our love and for our care. We need to make the Christmas message last.

In this Christmas Eucharist, you and I celebrate what Christmas is truly for - a relationship with us which God has striven so relentlessly to create. It is a relationship based on love, unconditional love. In the opening words of Christina Rossetti’s deceptively simple hymn, Love came down at Christmas.

For us to have a relationship of total openness to Jesus Christ is to be united to God, and thus to be united with the only thing, the only Being, that gives meaning to the reality we encounter around us each day. This relationship is grounded in God’s love for us in Jesus Christ, and his love brought through us into the world beyond the walls of this cathedral.

This is the real Christmas when we again see Christ’s glory, such glory as befits the Father’s