A ‘Feel-Good’ Christmas

The other night my wife and I called by and watched the ‘Sound and Light’ show offered by a place along Nepean Highway here in Frankston. The lights and sounds of Christmas. They can be warmly reassuring, as if everything is ok in the world after a year of turmoil. Pretty lights. Familiar tunes. Positive thoughts of peace and love.
Christmas activities are generally ‘safe’ for children to attend, and engage their minds and imaginations. Kids can be kids. There is a make-believe element, and a mystical element – reindeers carrying a red-suited gentleman from the north pole, etc. It seems pretty far-fetched, but is more about fun than deception. Though there comes a time when parents have to ‘fess up!
I think there’s a place for a ‘feel-good’ Christmas. Because Christmas, at its heart, is good news for humanity. It invites us to look beyond our own understandings to a mystery bigger than our power to comprehend it.
Celebrating a feel-good Christmas is in no way to pretend all is well with the world, that there aren’t very real evils to be faced. Indeed, the first Christmas was soon followed by the slaughter of the innocent baby boys of Bethlehem. The original Christmas provoked the hostilities of the paranoid and the power-hungry. It will do that again. Christians in many parts of the world will worship at their peril this Christmas.
For many in our own networks, and maybe for some of us, Christmas can be a mixture of sorrow with joy. It can remind us of those lost to us, of our grief, isolation, or inability to cope with life. It is a time to reach out and include those who find themselves on the fringe.
So may you have a ‘feel-good’ Christmas. May it include a worship of the Christ-child, not just the sights and sounds. May it also be a time of renewed strength and commitment to the way of this Christ in our interactions with others, and as we confront the slaughtering of the innocents in varying forms in our own day. May Christmas steel your resolve to live with hope, authenticity and courage through the year ahead.