Christmas Eve - 24th December 2025
Christmas had to be invented, it hasn’t always been there. That odd thought has only just struck me this year. For us brought up in a culture with Christian foundations it has been a fixture all our lives, anticipated with great excitement when we were children, perhaps with a certain weariness as adults when we find ourselves yet again with too much to do. We can feel cynical as we see Christmas being co-opted by commercial pressures to consume more and more to keep the wheels of economic growth turning. There are sentimental images of happy families with large Christmas trees surrounded by piles of presents and abundance of food that have little to do with the reality of many people’s lives.
So where did all this come from? As with the rest of our liturgical year it didn’t fall fully formed from heaven, it was something that grew and evolved as Christians lived with the mystery that they had encountered in Christ. Celebrations of Jesus’ birth are found in church records from the 2nd century onwards but with no agreed date. It wasn’t until the 4th century that the celebration of Jesus’ birth was attached to the winter solstice by Pope Julius I and 25th December became Christmas Day. Christianity was now the state religion and this decision Christianised a season of pagan mid-winter festivity that celebrated the turn of the year away from darkness towards the return of the light. Now Jesus Christ was celebrated as the bringer of light, the one who comes to enlighten each one of us.
For the earliest Christians the events of Easter were the centre of their faith, the death of Jesus on the cross followed by finding the empty tomb and their encounters with him in his risen life. The earliest gospel we have, that of Mark, doesn’t have anything about Jesus’ birth nor about the post-resurrection encounters. Jesus’ first appearance is as an adult, coming from Nazareth to be baptised in the Jordan by John. His life is portrayed as a journey towards his death on the cross in Jerusalem and the mysterious disappearance of his dead body. It is a story told by those who encountered Jesus living a new form of life beyond death – it was his living presence in their lives rather than written words that spoke the truth of this.
Pondering these experiences led them to wonder about the nature of Jesus as both human and divine. Long before any dogmatic formulations the gospels explored this in narrative form. The infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke provide answers in terms of human history and earthly events that place Jesus within the Jewish people as the long-expected Messiah, the Davidic king, albeit in a form very different from what was expected. John on the other hand opens with a cosmic perspective, writing of Jesus as the incarnation of the pre-existant Logos.
In different ways they speak of the mystery of God becoming man, of the self-emptying of God, that led to the fulfilment of the Messianic hopes of the people of Israel in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. This mystery is one with cosmic implications, the renewal of all things in Christ, and that cosmic dimension weaves its way through the intimate scenes of the infancy narratives as well as the magisterial proclamation of John’s prologue.
Our Christmas celebrations, especially the Eucharist, take us deep into this multi-faceted feast. Our crib conveys the importance of Jesus’ birth as a historical event – a baby was born and there was something special about this child, conveyed in the stories woven around his birth. The gospel reading from the prologue of John’s Gospel plunges us straight into a cosmic mystery, the pre-existant Word that became flesh as Jesus of Nazareth. We could spend a life time meditating on just this passage and never fully plumb its depths so I will not try to say more now! Enough to hold it there alongside the figures in the crib.
And then we gather around the altar to share in bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ, making present the sacrificial death of Jesus. As we partake of the sacrament we are a million miles away from all the tat and tinsel of the secular Christmas. In the midst of the celebration of Jesus’ birth we enter into his death and resurrection, that which is the focus of our faith. It is his willing surrender to the worst that human beings could do that bring hope to our broken world, that tell us that beyond the suffering there is a glorious new life. The hope signified by the birth of a baby in Bethlehem is an empty hope without the mystery of Easter.
I pray that this deep mystery of the incarnation of God will speak afresh to you over the coming days. Let it become strange and new once more, a celebration that had to be invented to give expression to the experience of Christ’s coming to birth in each one of us.
In the words of this morning’s collect: ‘May this long awaited feast of our redemption proclaim to all the world the glory of your self-giving love.’
Amen
Mother Anne - 24th December 2025