Anyone else feel like there’s a tendency to whitewash Christmas and the Advent season? The typical sentiments – merry and bright, the happiest time of the year, etc – often come across as marshmallow fluff, sickly saccharine and lacking any kind of nourishment or depth. Even the churchy nativity scenes are sanitized; of course there’s a manger for a bed, but the straw is clean, everyone is smiling, and the image is of a bright and fresh-smelling stable. I’m not sure how true to reality that is.
Perhaps that perfect image is what some individuals need for their holiday season. Maybe it works for them, to see the cheery decor, however false the smiles and sparkles are. I don’t find it to be so, but I am often in the minority, so perhaps this is simply another way in which I differ from average.
Malcolm Guite’s poem “Refugee”, found in his book of Advent readings Waiting for the Word, came as balm for my soul this morning. You can read the entire piece on his website, and I strongly encourage you to do so, but here’s the first half:
We think of him as safe beneath the steeple,
Or cosy in a crib beside the font,
But he is with a million displaced people
On the long road of weariness and want.
For even as we sing our final carol
His family is up and on that road,
Fleeing the wrath of someone else’s quarrel,
Glancing behind and shouldering the load.
I found this to bring in what most Christmas tidings lack: a measure of realism, and with that realism, relatability or accessibility. To a certain extent, I am simply unable to comprehend the dimly-lit, quiet and calm picture so often presented on Christmas. If the meaning of Christmas is truly Emmanuel, God with us, the Lord entering in and partaking of the trials and suffering of human existence, then this is a picture I would rather see. How much more meaningful is it that he too was displaced and knew that “long road of weariness and want”, for we too are refugees! Not that we have been physically displaced, wandering from country to country in hopes of asylum, but nonetheless we find ourselves temporarily living in a land that is not home.
That doesn’t make for the prettiest Christmas picture, but I would argue that it makes for a comforting one regardless.