Unpacking Christmas

Suitcase packing is an art - or is it a science?  Or is it an awful chore?  Those who spend a good deal of time travelling know how best to make use of the space available and judge the weight of their luggage.

Unpacking the excess in the full gaze of all at the air terminal is very embarrassing.

Packing up to move abroad has been a salutary experience for us, particularly as we anticipate the arrival of our cherished personal possessions this week, next week or whenever.  When our move to Bahrain was becoming a real possibility, someone said, "You'll love it.  It's such a wonderful, serene place."  I wasn't quite sure what he meant by "serene".  I'm beginning to learn.  Life certainly has its own pace, and expectations are rather different from those in the UK, especially during Ramadan.

And so we're learning as we anticipate the arrival of our belongings - sometime.  Another contributing feature of "serenity" is the weather.  The prospect of Christmas approaching in the guaranteed warm sunshine requires a not unpleasant mental shift.

I have to do a double take to realise that we're rapidly approaching December, the month for unpacking Christmas.  I've been shown where the crib figures are kept, told who puts up the Christmas tree, urged to think about the delicate balance of the Christmas services, and the carols are being practiced.  But someone enquired, Why don't we sing more carols in December?"

Preparatory Season
The answer, of course, is that it's Advent, the preparation season for Christmas.  In the living memory of some churchgoers Advent was a time when it was frowned upon to sing carols before Christmas.  It's a penitential season.

Carols begin on Christmas Eve, going through to Epiphany as we observe the "Christmas season", the coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ - God Incarnate.  As in so many other aspects of the Church, or ecclesiastical discipline, the secular hand of the "world" has forced changes almost imperceptibly.  From September onwards Christmas is slowly unpacked until by mid-December we're all sick and tired of the trappings of Christmas lying all over the floor in the full gaze of everyone.  By December 26 there's unseemly haste packing it all away for another nine months, including the carols.  Who sings carols after Christmas Day these days?

This surely isn't the real, authentic spirit of Christmas.  After those first visitors at the holy manger of the infant Jesus returned to their various homes, their lives and the life of humanity were changed forever.  Many might prefer to believe that the tableau was just packed away for another year, and we can get on with life in our own sweet way.

Christmas is, above all, the joyful proclamation that in Jesus Christ God has come into the very world he created, and that gives radical significance to the way we live every day of the year.  God has reached out his hand to us.  He invites us at this holy season to reaffirm our grasp of his loving hand.

Alan G.D. Hayday