Sixty-two years ago, as a young minister I gave a talk to the members of the Youth Club at a Congregational Church in Halifax. Amongst other things I inadvertently gave great offence and aroused considerable hostility. I made it plain that the nativity stories of the Gospels were largely fictional and not historical. We take them seriously, not literally. Nevertheless, we still love these ancient tales. Many of the young people were shocked and affronted. I can still see the faces of those lovely girls anxious and bewildered. (They will now be well into their seventies).
‘You are taking Christmas away from the kiddies,’ they declared, ‘and Christmas is everything to them. You are destroying children’s lives.’
I thought I was simply telling the truth and making available the insights of contemporary biblical scholars from a wide spread of denominations: Roman Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian and so on. I thought these scholars were bravely facing up to inconvenient facts that just had to be faced by thoughtful people. The girls could not see that I still loved the story of the Wise Men following a star, but I could not understand it literally. Ancient and medieval people had no conception of what a star is. They thought stars were just tiny twinkling ornaments. One could come down and sit on the roof of a house to single it out – but they had no idea that if a real star came as close as that it would burn up the whole Earth. Why not openly admit this?
Do the Wise Men kneel before the child and present their gifts because he is the King of the Universe? That is the official explanation. A more humanitarian insight says they bow down to show that all earthly political pomp, wealth and power exists not for its own self-glorification but to serve the true well-being of common vulnerable humanity, beautifully represented by the Holy Child.
In any case the girls did not understand what Christmas really is. As we actually practise it, Christmas consists of two intertwined stories, and thirdly there is a joke, or joker, that has become hugely popular. The first story is many thousands of years old and has been called many names. ‘Yuletide’ is one of them, the name for the ancient mid-winter festival with no mention of God, Mary or Jesus: a secular story. Winter is cold and dark and lasts a very long time, so people need to cheer one another up. Let’s not be sad and miserable, they said. Let’s light big fires to warm us, let’s light candles to banish the darkness. Let’s bring greenery into our homes, holly and ivy and fir trees: they will encourage the world’s plant life to come back strong and healthy. Let’s hold a big feast, eat, drink and be merry. Let’s give one another presents. The basic Christmas is present here. It is recognisably what people still do, whatever their beliefs or lack of belief. There is a fierce determination to go on defiantly despite winter’s cruel harshness, strong good-will in cheering and helping one another that has a warm religious feeling in it: gratitude for life and the will to keep it going at whatever cost.
Then two thousand years ago they joined all this to another story. Winter is dark and human life itself can be hideously dark and monstrously cruel. We need someone to banish the darkness and cruelty from human life, to save us from our inhumanity. Many people came to believe that Jesus is the one to transform the world and inspire goodness. He is (they believe) God in human form. He becomes the shining sun of human kindness. His birth becomes a great sign of a divine goodness entering into human life, embodying the highest values we can conceive of: loving generosity and justice raised to their highest power. Mary and her baby came to represent every mother and child, so Christmas became a birthday party, a great family festival, promising peace and goodwill to all. A very special grace and beauty were added to the mid-winter festival and transformed it.
Christmas is a meeting place, a marriage between the boisterous enjoyments of the world and what challenges and overcomes the world. The official version of Christmas is that it is the story of the Incarnation which is an action of the Holy Trinity. At Christmas the Eternal Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity becomes embodied in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. This is the most important event in the history of the world and that is why Christmas matters so much. John Betjeman’s poem, admirably succinct, expresses it: ‘God once was man in Palestine’. (In his mature years Betjeman confessed that he could only believe this now and then. A thoroughly humanitarian interpretation of this story is possible.)
Both the doctrines of the Incarnation and of the Trinity move Christianity in a humanitarian and humanistic direction. They are a vote of confidence in humanity which is seen as capable of embodying God, that is, supreme value. In the Trinity humanity is taken up into the Godhead as the Second Person, Divine Logos, which can be translated as the Word, or Purpose, or Intention of God. The Trinity can also be understood as a vote of confidence in the value of human community, though most people learn the value of community by actually being a member of one rather than by reference to a theological dogma.
During the first three centuries of the new era Christian theologians, much influenced by Greek philosophy, expressed its doctrines in increasingly complex and exclusivist ways. They believed logic could work out the implications of revelation. This is called ‘development’. The doctrines were not easy to understand. It was said that if you think you at last understand the doctrine of the Trinity then it is clear you have misunderstood it. In first-century Galilee, did people recognise that God Almighty Incarnate was treading the footpaths with them? Was Jesus himself aware that he was God? In the Synoptic Gospels he declines to be called even ‘good’ and refuses to act as a judge. It may be, as the Buddha suggested, that such questions tend not to edification.
However, there is another way of looking at these doctrines. They can be seen, says Lloyd Geering, as moving Christianity in a humanistic direction: God becomes Man and humanity is part of the Godhead. I know what kiddies think about Christmas because I was once a kiddie myself. I vividly remember Christmas 1940 when I was six. I adored our little ornamental tree. Above all I was thrilled to think that Father Christmas was coming. He indeed came secretly and silently and I never saw him, but on Christmas morning in the pillow-slip at the bottom of my bed were toys, chocolates, sweets and an orange. He had come, as everybody said he would! As far as I was concerned this was Christmas: we did not go to Church and Father Christmas was more real to me than the Babe of Bethlehem.
Father Christmas (the essential third element in the popular Christmas, a great joke and joker) is a completely fantasy figure. Fantasy, we know, can be bad. Those who are too afraid to face reality retreat into fantasy and lead diminished lives; dictators indulge in fantasies of absolute power and invincibility; people become obsessed with cruel sexual fantasies. All the same, fantasy is a vital part of the human imagination informing and empowering all the arts and sciences. Flights of fancy may take us into important realms of reality. Father Christmas (also known as Santa Claus or Santa in America) is a supernatural figure of the human imagination who has become Big Business all over the world. He is completely miraculous: a fat old grandfather sort of person who can squeeze down chimneys to deliver presents. Like the Risen Christ, he can pass through locked doors. On Christmas Eve he can be simultaneously at every child’s house in the world. A team of reindeer pull his sleigh through the sky, Like God, it seems, he can be everywhere at once, but he is also rumoured to live at the North Pole, occupied in making the presents that he so generously gives away. We all know he is completely unbelievable, but we do not dismiss him, for we know he represents something of great value.
In America misguided films appear depicting Richard Attenborough as a lovely old man who turns out to be really and truly, no kidding, Santa himself, so there! Take him literally, don’t disappoint the kiddies! We all reach years of discretion and know that Santa is not ‘real’. He fades as fact and remains as fun. Yes, he is completely unbelievable, but as he is so much fun, so entertaining, we will never banish him. He is too good a joke to lose, even for the sternest rationalists. Can you take a joke? Don’t despise fun.
We can apply all this to many of the world’s great religious stories. They can be profoundly true, poetically beautiful and moving without being literally historical events. We all know that Father Christmas is a fantasy but not on that account to be despised. It would be stupid to become righteously offended by harmless fantasies.
The dangerous thing is to claim one’s fantasies as facts. Hitler took his fantasies about ‘race’ as facts, so producing the hell of the Holocaust. The Inquisitors and the Calvinists of Geneva thought their fantasies were facts, enabling them in good conscience to torture and burn people alive. Father Christmas is harmless. Like Mary the mother of Jesus, he condemns no one. He has never desired to cause the unhappiness or death of a single person, he is uproariously comic, larger than life, always life-loving, dispelling the gloom of winter. No one has ever killed or destroyed on his behalf. He still remains a very good advertisement for Christmas.