麻豆社

Today this year鈥檚 Christmas number one will be announced after a race to the top of the charts involving Wham!鈥檚 Last Christmas and The Pogues鈥� Fairytale of New York. Both are old songs from the Eighties. For all the jolliness of their sound, neither are accounts of goodwill among men 鈥� Last Christmas a melancholic tale of betrayal and Fairytale a story of a beleaguered relationship. And both have particular poignancy, because the Pogues鈥� lead singer, Shane McGowan, born on Christmas Day 1957, died just a few weeks ago, while George Michael, who wrote, sang, produced and played all the instruments on Last Christmas died alone on Christmas Day 2016.

For many people Christmas isa really poignant and difficult time.
There is melancholy behind its tinselly fa莽ade. Many people in the UK have relatives in Israel, Gaza, Ukraine and many other war-torn places around the world. Or like Shane and George鈥檚 families, they have lost people they loved. Sometimes writing Happy Christmas on a card can seem singularly inappropriate.

It seems to me to that the idea of happiness has become devalued. It鈥檚 often assumed that happiness is to be found through material things, or through a drink, or money 鈥� though at Christmas, of course, money can help. So perhaps it might be worth getting away from the idea of Happy Christmas. It鈥檚 too fraught an expression, too cliched now.

Perhaps the word to use that would be more suitable for Christmas is joy. Last Sunday Christians marked Gaudete Sunday, meaning a day of joy or of rejoicing. To rejoice is to delight in something, to be glad about it. Christians are joyful that God took flesh and was born, to live a life like ours, and to be truly human, and show how being truly human is about goodness.

When St Paul wrote to the Philippians he told them: 鈥淩ejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice鈥�, even though he was incarcerated in a prison cell. That can鈥檛 have been a happy time for him, but he could look beyond it.

The prophet Isaiah offered hope for the future when he foretold the Messiah鈥檚 coming, saying that he would bind up hearts that are broken. Comfort ye, my people.

Christmas has become a time for many people of looking back, of nostalgia. But the real message of Christmas is of hope, of a birth that would transform the world. However lovely the songs that top the charts, they offer nothing of tomorrow. But Christmas, and the real joy of the season, does.

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