I think that mine - notwithstanding Fellows and Brewster hospitality in most of the years before and since - has to be 1995. Snow lay on the ground and fell again on Christmas Day. I’d finished being a lollipop man for the Christmas holidays and was living in a terrace in Bradford, scraping ice from the inside of the skylight window of the garret room where I lived, performing the morning wash in the contents of a still-warm hot water bottle, cooking porridge on a faulty stove and drawing back the curtains that didn’t quite cover the windows.
How we used to live...
Why was it good? I think it’s because it fell into three halves. Pardon the maths.
The first half was worship. It was waking up, making porridge and then gathering with my housemates in the local church, which was colder than the house and where the singing rarely reached fever pitch. It was singing unashamedly (and probably tunelessly) the Christmas story, spurred on because a lot of the regulars seemed to have mislaid the joy of Christmas. It was worship: Jesus Christ is born today! Joy to the world! We three kings (no, I don’t know why that got sung on Christmas morning either. Does it matter?).
Our lovely little church (building).
The second half was service. My housemates and I skidded and slithered and stomped through the snow (me on a bike on sheet ice, which is not advisable) to the local nursing home, where lots of older people in the stages of dementia were mostly busy not being visited by family. We trotted round the wards belting out carols and chatting and holding hands and hopefully bringing something to the staff and residents on a bright but cold afternoon.
The third half was more celebration. It involved a duck, some oranges and at least two bottles of wine and some whisky. It involved laughter and some small presents and Christmas pudding and generally laughing at the year we’d just lived through.
A duck and some oranges. At least one of these has a surprise coming its way.
And if I tell you that the third half came in the middle of the day, just before the second half, you’ll get a clue as to why the carol singing was so entertaining and uncensored, so liberated and such fun.
Best. Christmas. Ever. It’s because it deliberately involved worshipping God. It deliberately involved an effort towards the lonely. And it deliberately involved celebration. We chose Christmas, after twenty years of letting Christmas be chosen for us by family traditions.
Family traditions can be good, but they can also turn Christmas onto autopilot, and leave you asking when it’s all done just exactly what it is you did do. Christmas can be a well-trodden path, which is either comforting, or a slippery slope, which is annoying. Christmas can be a family reunion, which is often nice, or a sitcom, which is deeply frustrating (and hence all the alcohol often involved!).
Does every family turn into a sitcom at Christmas? Discuss.
To get the elements of Christmas you want, you may well have to give family the slip (get ordained is my advice, it’s a great excuse for not being at home for Christmas!) and excuse yourself for church or an afternoon walk or ten minutes prayer by yourself with God and a candle. But don’t let the best bits of Christmas slip past.
Choose Christmas. And I assert that the best Christmases to choose will always involve worship, service and celebration. Have a go!
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