Behind the cozy crib scenes

I had forgotten all about the school assembly. This was before I came to Wolvercote, I should add, but it was one of those days that we all have, when we wake up at 5am realising that we had forgotten a meeting or appointment or some other commitment. Except it wasn’t 5am, it was 9.15am and school assembly started at 9.45.
It was the last week of term before Christmas, and so I went into school with a rather sketchy plan in my head about how many of the characters in the Christmas story were surprised but ended up being joyful. I asked the children to name characters in the story and to come and make a pageant of the crib scene. It was the best I could manage off the top of my head. We had Mary and Joseph and Jesus, and a star, and some cows and camels, and a donkey, and an innkeeper, and then one of the children said Herod. I had a momentary panic because I’d forgotten all about Herod. But I said brilliant, come and be part of the crib scene. So we had Herod and Mrs Herod standing around the manger.
We get some very strange things creeping into nativity scenes, like little Santas kneeling there with the shepherds, but Herod doesn’t tend to feature. Which isn’t surprising really, given that he is the one who was so threatened by Jesus’s birth that he ordered the widespread slaughter of innocent people, including young children. The Holy Family have to flee for their lives.
There are all sorts of versions of Christmas that have no basis in the biblical accounts. There’s the Jesus who never cries, and as we progress into his wondrous childhood there’s the Jesus who would honour and obey, watch and love the lowly maiden, in whose gentle arms he lay – which is a bit odd, given the only other thing we know about that stage of his life is that he ran away from his parents when he was 12. We might ask how Christmas went from being a story about an oppressive political regime, homelessness and refugees to the cosy crib scenes on our cards.
So much of the Christmas story gets airbrushed out of our carols and nativity plays – as indeed I did when I went into school that time. But there are plenty of reasons to remember them. The Christmas story reveals a God who enters our world as it really is – a world where innocent children are killed in civilian crossfire, where people have to flee their homes and countries, a world where homelessness and cruelty and poverty and fear are all-too-present realities, and a world where we face our own struggles and challenges, tyrants and terror, and may feel little of the merriment that the advertising industry tells us we should.
The world into which Jesus was born was certainly not a glittery Christmas card. The world has never been that world. But the holy season of Christmas gives us the promise that God is with us and that the light shines in the darkness.
Whatever your Christmas looks like, please remember that the church is here for you. We warmly invite you to join us for our Advent and Christmas celebrations [details on the enclosed card?]. We will be celebrating the incarnation – the amazing truth that in Jesus, God comes to us, to the reality of the world and the reality of our lives, however far they are from the model of how we are told Christmas should be. So whether you come in joy or in sorrow, join us. We would love to see you.