Snippet

Belief

Christmas culture

Creed

26 December 2024

3 min read

My Boxing Day anti-climax

What if the most wonderful time has come and gone, and not much has changed?

Jonathan Torrance

Jonathan is a priest and theologian who researches theology and comedy.

A grump cat wears a red Christmas hat, sitting amongst Christmas decorations.

Amin Alizadeh on Unsplash.

Can I begin by sharing an embarrassing secret?

Every year I find Christmas… a disappointment.

This is because it turns out that I’m still basically a 10-year-old, and I still, in the core of my being, believe that the presents under the tree are going to be the key to the lasting happiness I seek.

And, not only that, but I am also convinced that somehow all the candles, and the nostalgia, and the Christmas specials of Call the Midwife, will add up to some glorious, mulled wine inspired transcendence.

Now I know all this is nonsense.

I know that low expectations are the key to enjoying family holidays; that the presents are tokens of love, and sometimes obligation, which aren’t supposed to complete me.

And yet, on Boxing Day there is always this sensation of anti-climax.

The presents have been opened, and the people I love have done their best, and sometimes given me truly creative and thoughtful presents, but none of them are the specific thing I secretly craved.

And the carols were stunning, and candlelight does make everything and everyone beautiful, and I cried at Call the Midwife, but I’m still me, with all my ambivalence and endless need and childish self-regard.

The most wonderful time of the year has come and gone, and not much has changed.

Which gets me thinking about that first Christmas, and how anti-climactic, in some ways, that was too.

Christians believe that the birth of this particular baby in that particular stable, was a key turning point in all history, as God entered the world in human form, coming to rescue his people and restore humanity.

But in the short term, how much actually changed?

Mary and Joseph still faced the overwhelming task of keeping a new-born alive, in a stable far from home.

The shepherds and the wise men seem to have wondered back to their respective lives, and are never heard from again.

And evil still rages unchecked. The story doesn’t make it into many Nativity plays (strangely enough) but the next episode in the narrative is truly horrific – Herod, the paranoid ruler massacring all the babies in Bethlehem in a futile attempt to eliminate the new-born king.

The light shineth in darkness, as we hear in the stunning final reading of Carol services, but the darkness comprehended it not.

Christmas came and went, and the world kept turning.

Christian faith always has to contend with this reality – that not much may change. And so for me there is actually hope in the recognition that the bible includes quite a lot of reality – quite a lot of disappointment, and non-transformation, and outright evil – in its telling of the entrance of God into the world.

And yet, and yet. I also believe that that baby, that birth, that Christmas, really did sow concrete seeds of change into the midst of the darkness and disappointment.

The darkness may not have comprehended the light, but neither could it overcome it.

And somehow, the light shines still, even amidst the piles of wrapping paper and washing up and reminders of human failure that fill our post-Christmas days.

Happy boxing day!

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Snippet

Belief

Community

Creed

10 March 2025

2 min read

Is Giles Coren on the way to being overwhelmed?

In a disembodied digital age, he's made a decision to participate instead.

Jamie Mulvaney

Jamie is Vicar of St Michael's Chester Square, London

A casually dressed man strides down the aisle of a church between the pews.

Danique Godwin on Unsplash

It takes a lot of courage to write about what you don’t know. Newspaper columnists and restaurant critics are paid to be omniscient, and Giles Coren is very good at channeling observation and insight into his articles in an acerbic and amusing way.

On Saturday he wrote in The Times about what he does and doesn’t know about Christianity. He wrote with humility and humour, which amongst other things made me wonder how many of us who are part of the church would do well to be honest about what we don’t know.

The journey that Coren tells about his “not not believing” is staked along the way by the language of the church and its buildings. In other words: worship.

Belle Tindall recently wrote about the prejudice met by Kate in White Lotus when she tells her friends that she finds going to church “very moving.” To them it is “self-defeating”, but perhaps it opens us up the possibility that there is a greater centre of gravity than our own selves. Going to church has been associated with so many unhelpful divisions and distractions and often the church is to blame.

But believers and non-believers alike run the risk of missing out on so much of faith. We limit it to information and observation, when the full benefit is found in participation. Whether pilgrims, prodigals or someone else altogether, we can analyse and stand on the sidelines as much as we want, but Coren and his son are taking part:

“I gave up not going to church some time ago. Most Sundays I am there, praying and singing — another lapsed atheist hoping that the non-existent God he was brought up not to believe in doesn’t see.”

Perhaps this act, and writing about it in The Times, is even braver given our seemingly disembodied, digital, post-pandemic individualistic lives. A podcast may give you propositional truths you can accept or reject, but being caught up in worship is in a different order altogether. Coren writes:

“And I have a sense that God is there — in the tradition, the words, the 2,000 years of conviction, the imagination of all the people who came before me…”

God is the interesting thing about Christianity, and Christians believe that this God became man. Amidst all that we don’t know and don’t see, going to church makes tangible what can feel intangible.

Coren writes that the only moment he feels left out is in Communion, and that perhaps one day he will get baptised. The Greek word where we get ‘baptism’ from means to overwhelm. In an overwhelming world, more and more are seeing the merit in being overwhelmed with God. If we are to experience this, it means that at some point we need to dive into the water.