The night before Christmas

Here's my article for the December and January magazines:

Our Christmas traditions and celebrations come from many different places and cultures, but perhaps one of the greatest influences on our perception of Christmas is the 1823 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” by Clement Clarke Moore, more commonly known by its first line: “ 'Twas the night before Christmas”. In this poem Moore describes St Nicholas, names his reindeer, and has him coming down the chimney to deliver presents. This eventually became the standard legend of Santa Claus, replacing many of the local variations on the theme of Christmas visitors. However, we should probably have also noted Moore's warnings in his follow-up poem “The Night after Christmas” which describes the children being visited by their doctor after having too many of the treats delivered by Santa!!

The phrase “The night before Christmas” evokes all those feelings of anticipation for the joy of Christmas, but in his book “The Air We Breathe”, Glen Scrivener uses it in a different way. His book describes how the Christian message underpins the way we view life and the values we hold, noting particularly the contrast with the values of the society into which the Christian message was first preached. He describes that culture as the night before Christmas.

The metaphor of night is very apt as it reminds us that the values that we think of as obvious, natural and universal (Glen highlights the values of equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom and progress) are “profoundly alien” to the culture, assumptions, beliefs, intuitions and ideals of the pre-Christian and non-Christian world. It's not that the ancient world was a little bit worse than our Western world, rather it is as different to us as night is to day. But we've spent so long in the light that we can't imagine what night would look like and therefore can't believe it ever existed.

Glen reminds us that Christmas, Jesus' birth, marked the end of that night. Some claim that the celebration of Christmas is pagan in origin, pointing to similarities in celebrations and even the concept of a god coming to earth. However,even before he could walk or talk, Jesus' birth is in stark contrast to the myths around at the time. In those myths, humans are created to be slaves or entertainment for the gods, and when a god comes to earth it is usually to kill, rape and destroy – and all should fear. But when Jesus is born the Almighty God becomes human (John 1:1-14) and the world is told to rejoice (Luke 2:8-20). Humans have dignity because they are made in the image of God and because God chose to become human. And from that good news flows all the values that form the 'day' we live in.

Jesus' birth has influenced and shaped our world more than Moore's poem has influenced our celebration of Christmas. This Christmas why not find out more about the Jesus who brings the morning which shatters the night that we had before Christmas?