Thought for Christmas

The newspaper photo recorded a dismal scene: anonymous suburbs, shabby buildings, streets windswept and stark on a winter's afternoon. Struggling across a traffic island came an elderly couple, exhaustion etched into their faces. At least one presumed they were a couple, but they were not together. Engrossed in the painful task of the moment they staggered along as best they could at their own pace, unable to offer each other assistance. Behind them they dragged old shopping trolleys, the canvas distorted and ready to split under the weight of an invisible load.

And who were this wretched pair? Elderly residents of Sarajevo returning home after scavenging for firewood? No; they were a couple from Luton, dragging back to the Dunkirk ferry their heavy haul of Christmas booze from a French hypermarket.

I wonder what the French make of this invasion of alcohol-grabbing Brits. There are other bargain-seeking pilgrimages in Europe, but surely nothing like this mass invasion, stripping cans and bottles off shelves like a plague of locusts. And all for Christmas. If it was a matter of tax which took the Holy Family to Bethlehem, it's equally a matter of tax which takes British families to Boulogne.

What if anything has this human lager-chain got to do with the Christchild?

The first Christians were not greatly concerned with celebrating Christ's birth They were too preoccupied with waiting for his second coming. When they realised that the world was not so quickly going to be taken up into the mind of God, they turned to celebrating how the mind of God had come down to the world as a child. They hijacked the first convenient pagan festival, the passing of the winter solstice and the lengthening of the days, as a symbol of hope.

Now we know that Easter is the real triumph of hope. But Christmas represents the first flame from hope's spark. So many people sow seeds of longing that 'something will turn up', and Christmas is the first shoot. However tackily or messily it is celebrated, however much the cuddles and smiles of Christmas Day turn into the slammed doors and flying plates of Boxing Day, Christ's untidy birth is symbolically there too.

We mustn't be too snooty about 'Unchristian Christmases'. If 'Christian Christmas' borrowed from paganism, then - who knows? - maybe one day the 'ferrying of the drink' may be part of the Christmas liturgy.

Happy Christmas!