Special Days in December

Revd Canon Ivor Moody, the Vice-Dean of Chelmsford,
provides a reflection on the importance of names.
This was recorded for the third Sunday of Advent 13th December 2020.

21^st December:          Winter Solstice

 A Midwinter festival has been a part of life since pre-Christian times. When the hours of daylight are fewest, the warmth of the sun weakest, and life itself seemingly at a standstill, our ancestors, the pagan peoples of Europe and Western Asia, kept festival by lighting bonfires and decorating their buildings with evergreens.  Perhaps they believed that the dying sun could be en-heartened by fire, and the life of the buried seed assured by the presence of evergreen branches.

 With the advent of Christianity, the Spring gods became identified with Christ, and the birthday of the sun with the birthday of the Light of the World.

 The early church father Tertullian did not approve of Christmas decorations. “Let those who have no light in themselves light candles! You are the light of the world, you are the tree ever green....” But by the time of St Gregory and St Augustine, four centuries later, this had changed. Pope Gregory instructed Augustine not to worry about harmless outward customs, as long as the right God be worshipped through them. And so many Anglo-Saxon customs were never discarded, but simply endowed with a new significance. 

 By 1598 one John Stow of London wrote how: “Against the feast of Christmas, every man’s house, as also their parish churches, were decked with holme, ivie, bayes, and whatsoever the season of the yeare afforded to be greene.”

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     25^th December:  

        Three Reflections:

 1.     And there were shepherds…

 Luke’s story of the birth of Jesus is   brilliantly told – the angel’s visit to Mary to   tell her she would be mother of the long-   promised Messiah; also the old priest in the Temple told, by another angel, that his wife would have a son to be called ‘John’, who would prepare the people of Israel for that event; and then Mary and Joseph making the 60 mile journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, as required by the Roman census. When they got there, no room at the inn, and they settled instead for a convenient stable, where Mary gave birth to a boy child.

 Suddenly, Luke changes the tone. ‘And there were shepherds …’ – that’s what he actually wrote, just like that. ‘And there were shepherds’, doing exactly what shepherds do, looking after their flocks by night. But this night was different: yet another angelic message – a call to abandon their sheep and go into Bethlehem to see the baby Messiah. They were given directions and a ‘sign’ to identify Him. He would be lying in a feeding trough. Well, at least they would recognise that.

 And why the shepherds, in this glorious story of our salvation? Because the event needed witnesses, and the chosen witnesses would be this bunch of scruffy, smelly shepherds straight from the sheep-pen.  Nothing could speak more eloquently of God’s purpose than that. This was not a Saviour for the strong, rich and powerful, but for everybody. The carpenter and his wife guarded the Saviour of the world, and the very first witnesses were not kings or priests but a handful of shabby shepherds.

   2.     Christmas and St Luke’s Gospel

 It is to St Luke’s wonderful gospel that many Christians turn as the year draws to a close and Christmas approaches, for it is to St Luke that we owe the fullest account of the nativity. Luke alone tells us the story of Mary and the angel’s visit to her, and has thus given the Church the wonderful Magnificat of Mary. 

 Luke alone tells us the story of Simeon’s hymn of praise, thus giving us the wonderful Nunc Dimmittis. Imagine an Anglican evensong without the Nunc Dimmittis. Luke alone tells us the story of how the angels appeared to the shepherds and how the shepherds then visited the infant Jesus. So – imagine Christmas cards and nativity scenes every year without the shepherds arriving to visit baby Jesus. Imagine school nativity plays without our children dressed as shepherds or sheep. So – thank you, Luke!

 What makes it so amazing is that Luke was not a Jew! The man who wrote the fullest nativity story, and indeed more of the New Testament than any other single person, was a Gentile!

 3.     The Man who married Mary

 The traditional Nativity scene on our Christmas cards has Mary with the Holy Babe. Around her are the shepherds and Magi. We may also see stable animals, angels and a star! While Joseph is often included, his presence seems to be of minor importance.                                   

 After all, we praise God for Jesus with our familiar Christmas carols, mentioning angels, shepherds, Wise Men and Mary but the name of Joseph is absent! Why is Joseph given a low profile?  For he is a man to be remembered. Joseph was a resident of Nazareth. He worked as a carpenter and his skills would have included making furniture, repairing buildings and crafting agricultural tools. Although Joseph had an honourable profession, he would not have been a man of great wealth.

 The gospel writers Matthew and Luke give Joseph a few brief mentions. After the birth of Jesus, Joseph and Mary go to the temple in Jerusalem to dedicate the Baby to God. Afterwards, they flee into Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod and much later return to Nazareth.  12 years later, Mary and Joseph go with Jesus to Jerusalem for the Passover feast. Here they lose Jesus, only to find Him in the Temple talking with religious leaders!

 Apart from these verses, the New Testament is silent about the rest of Joseph’s life. However, we do know that Joseph was father to other children by Mary. His four sons are named, and they had at least two daughters.  (See Matthew 13:55)

 And we also know that Joseph was someone who quietly and humbly took on the awesome role in caring for the early life of the Son of God. Joseph would have taught Jesus many things – not just the skills of a labourer, but the lore of the countryside which was evident in our Lord’s teaching. Jesus grew up within a loving family and described God as ‘Father’, knowing also the good fatherly qualities of Joseph.

 In the Christmas story, Joseph is placed into a situation that brought him misunderstanding and suspicion. But Joseph remained faithful in the knowledge that as long as God had spoken, the opinion of others mattered little. Before Jesus began His ministry, it is believed that Joseph died. It is likely Jesus took on many of His father’s responsibilities before He left home.

 In the eyes of the world, Joseph was a nobody. He was not a man of valour, fame and fortune. But he was the one who had parental responsibility for the greatest person who has ever lived!

 It is sad that we often equate ordinariness with ineffectiveness. Down the ages, God has used many ordinary people to accomplish great things. God continues to use ordinary people. Like Joseph, we need to know that doing God’s will is the most important thing in life. May we, this Christmas, respond to God’s call to us and please Him in all that we do.

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26^th December:          On the Feast of Stephen 

 Everyone knows that it was on the feast of Stephen that ‘Good King Wenceslas looked on’. After all, it’s in a Christmas carol - but why? There’s nothing about Christmas in it: a splendid young page who rustled up some flesh, wine and logs, an old man out in the snow (’deep and crisp and even’) and a kindly monarch. But Christmas?

 The clue is in ‘the feast of Stephen’, which falls on 26^th December, or ‘Boxing Day’, as we know it. That, too, has nothing to do with Christmas, beyond the fact that in the past people put a contribution in tradesmen’s boxes as a kind of Christmas present for their services during the year.

 The Stephen whose feast day falls on the day after Christmas was the first Christian martyr. (You can read his story in the book of Acts). He was a member of the church in Jerusalem in its very early days, and soon found himself involved with six others in administering the allocation of food to those in need. The apostles, who were the leaders of the church, felt that it wasn’t appropriate for them to abandon preaching and ‘serve tables’, so they selected these seven to do the job for them. Stephen, however, quickly revealed hidden gifts as an eloquent spokesman for the Christian cause.

 The Temple authorities, who had already had trouble with the apostles, were soon alerted to this new and hitherto unknown evangelist. They decided to make an example of him, thus firing a warning shot, as it were, across the bows of the apostles themselves. So, they arrested Stephen and accused him of speaking against the two central elements of their religion - the ‘holy place’ (the Temple) and ‘the customs Moses handed down to us’ (the Law). It’s always dangerous to criticise a monument or a custom!

 Given the right to defend himself, Stephen instead launched into an eloquent and at times biting account of Jewish history, culminating in the accusation that they had committed the worst possible sin by killing the Messiah. Inflamed by his words, his hearers abandoned any pretence of legal impartiality, rushing towards him and dragging him out of the city to a place where they began to stone him to death. Stephen, the rank and file Christian, died under a hail of rocks for claiming that Mary’s Son was the promised Messiah.

 That is most probably the reason why the first martyr is honoured on the day after we celebrate the birth of the Saviour. And the gifts of the Wise Men is a reminder, that the bitter shadow of a cross is never far away from this story.