Prelude Melodia Africana I by Ludovico Einaudi
Opening Words Advent: Hope of Angels by Cliff Reed
The light of Christmas beckons
and we stumble towards it once again,
through doubt, distraction and despair.
Be with us on our journey, we pray,
Spirit of him who came and is to come,
give us hope enough to hear the angels,
and to help others hear them too.
Amen
Chalice Lighting (you may wish to light a candle in your own home at this point). Words by Laura Dobson
We light our chalice candle as a symbol of hope, peace, joy, and love.
The light reminds us that love is the greatest power in the world,
the love we share and bless each other with,
here in our beloved community;
the love we take out into the world,
bearing and sharing the light,
wherever we are and whoever we are with,
every day of our lives.
Opening Prayer
Spirit of Life and Love,
be with us as we gather for worship,
each in our own place.
Help us to feel a sense of community,
even though we are physically apart.
Help us to care for each other,
in this world in which Covid has not yet gone away,
and the clouds of war and climate change overshadow us.
May we keep in touch however we can,
and help each other, however we may.
May we be grateful for the freedoms we have
and respect the wishes of others.
May we hold in our hearts all those
who are grieving, lost, alone,
suffering in any way,
Amen
Reading from Doing December Differently by Nicola Slee and Rosie Miles (adapted)
With its compulsive idolatry of money and consumption, and its idealisation of family life, the way our culture celebrates Christmas marginalises and excludes great numbers of people. These include anyone from any kind of broken or dysfunctional family (and that includes most of us); single people, whether by choice of circumstance; those who are divorced or separated; childless couples who long for children; …children who, for whatever reasons, do not fit the mould of active, acquisitive consumers; gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered folk… the bereaved, and carers of the profoundly ill. All are ostracised from the mythical idyll of Christmas, unable to play happy families.
Christmas is also deeply problematic for all of us who cannot or do not wish to comply with the pressures of materialism that the secular season exerts. Poorer people cannot play this game; and many others of us don’t want to.
This book explores how people of faith and goodwill might mark the midwinter season and the Christmas festival… with integrity and simplicity, in ways that include others and celebrate difference, that do not put us all under intolerable strain, or perpetuate false and oppressive myths of the ideal family life.
Alternative Lord’s Prayer
Spirit of Life and Love, here and everywhere,
May we be aware of your presence in our lives.
May our world be blessed.
May our daily needs be met,
And may our shortcomings be forgiven,
As we forgive those of others.
Give us the strength to resist wrong-doing,
The inspiration and guidance to do right,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
We are your hands in the world; help us to grow.
May we have compassion for all living beings,
And receive whatever life brings,
With courage and trust. Amen
Reading Some principles and guidelines for doing December differently Part 1 by Nicola Slee
Do what you can to make small changes. There is always the option of making some kind of change which can shift things, however small it may seem. Do not despair! Do not feel trapped.
Be compassionate – to yourself as well as to your relations, friends, etc. Be as gentle with yourself as it’s possible to be, and be realistic about what you can and can’t expect to ‘get out’ of Christmas. Give up the illusion of the ‘perfect Christmas’. Weave the wounds and flaws into the cloth.
Cherish and claim limitation, restraint, simplicity and ‘enough-ness’ as sound Advent principles, inasmuch as you can. Practice saying no. Stay in. Create small spaces for silence, rest, prayer, in whatever ways you can manage amidst the mayhem.
Plan ahead. Write yourself a note during or just after this Christmas to remind yourself of the things you need to remember next year. Stick it in your diary for sometime around the middle of November.
Communicate. Talk to family and friends about how you plan to, or would prefer to, manage Christmas. Explain what you are going to do and why. Expect them to understand; but even if they don’t, be clear and consistent.
Prayer by Alan Ruston
Eternal spirit, indwelling in us all, may we never forget the significance of Advent as a time of preparation, not just for Christmas, but for the passing of the old year and the welcoming of the new.
Christmas, for most of us, means the buying and receiving of presents, the decoration of our homes with greenery… and much else. Many of these customs are very old, their origin lost in antiquity – further back in time than the coming of Christianity.
At midwinter, when the hours of daylight were fewest, the warmth of the sun weakest, and life itself seemingly at a low ebb, our ancient ancestors kept festivals by lighting bonfires and decorating all around with evergreen to sustain them at this most challenging time of the year.
May our acts of celebration at this season inspire us to work for brighter and more enlivening times in the coming year when the world we live in may often appear in danger of slipping into chaos and negativity.
Let us celebrate the cycle of the year by these December activities, as symbols of renewal. The evergreen branches even now in this seemingly dead season are living and will renew. The seeds of growth and hope are ever present within and around us, just waiting to appear to us in the coming new year as they have always done in the past.
Now is a time to celebrate possibilities.
May it be so, Amen
Reading Some principles and guidelines for doing December differently Part 2 by Nicola Slee (adapted)
Make connections with people and places very different from yourself and your own context. Find some ways, however small-scale, of welcoming the stranger in your midst. This may be on your doorstep or on the other side of the world. Utilise links with charities and churches in other parts of the world to extend hospitality and concern to those who need prayer and/or material support. Assist the poor and marginalised in your own neighbourhood or city, or, at the very least, bring their names and stories into your preaching, prayer, thoughts.
Reclaim the positive yet critical engagement with culture from which the original celebration of Christmas emerged. Whichever tradition explaining the origins of the festivals of Christmas we opt for, it seems clear that the ancient Church’s celebration of the birth of Christ on December 25th was a robust way of engaging with their culture and challenging some of its most prevalent values and assumptions. Advent developed as an alternative to the pagan festival of Saturnalia, which was marked by excess and debauchery. Christmas may have developed as an alternative to the Winter Solstice, proclaiming Jesus as the ‘Sun of righteousness’ who outshines all the pagan gods. In what ways can we celebrate Christmas today so that we engage with culture, yet also contest its hedonism, narcissism and myopia?
Try to keep a sense of perspective. Build in good recovery time afterwards. Give up on guilt. Laugh at the god-awful bits. Cherish the unexpected moments of wonder.
Time of Stillness and Reflection Cropthorne Christmas Blessing by Rosie Miles (adapted)
The blessings of bubble bath and bacon,
divas and desire, fairies and feasting,
Be ours.
The blessings of liturgy and love,
walking and wanting, cooking and creating,
Be ours.
The blessings of friendship and fire,
weaving and wine, Jenga and joy,
Be ours.
The blessings of poetry and pleasure,
tears and touching base, solitude and sleep,
Be ours.
The blessings of talking and tasting,
presents and peace, struggle and sexuality,
Be ours.
The blessings of hugging and holding,
dancing and delight, laughter and lunch,
Be ours.
The blessings of candles and craft,
wassail and whisky, leftovers and longing,
Be ours.
The blessings of preparation and poinsettias,
gaiety and good food, hurt and healing,
Be ours.
[silence]
May all these rich blessings, the blessings of Christmas,
Be ours this season, and all the days of our lives.
Amen
Musical Interlude I Giorni by Ludovico Einaudi
Address Doing December Differently
It has been quite a depressing year, one way or another. The NHS has been lurching from crisis to crisis; asylum seekers and refugees have continued to be reluctantly received and treated without compassion; the war in Gaza grinds on, as does the one in the Ukraine; there were widespread riots in August, instigated by right-wing extremists; Donald Trump was re-elected as President of the USA; Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby has had to resign following news of Church of England cover-ups of sexual abuse; and there have been various storms which have done more or less damage across the UK. Many people continue to live in food and fuel poverty.
However, it has not been all doom and gloom. Labour won the General Election (which I at least found to be good news, although I appreciate this may not be shared by some of you!); British athletes did quite well in both the Summer Olympics and the Summer Paralympics, and the so-called Northern Lights have been seen on several occasions far south of their usual appearance, filling the sky with gorgeous curtains of pink and green. And the MUA Sustainability Audit has taken place, which I believe is going to benefit all the participating congregations, enabling them to begin 2025 in new heart.
So yes, it has been a mixed year. If we are lucky, the approaching Christmas season will be an opportunity to put any sorrows to the back of our minds and enjoy time with friends and family. Although I absolutely refuse to buy into the mythical Christmas toted by the advertising people. We live in a world in which the advertising and marketing industries batter our minds ceaselessly – “You need this”, “Your life will be incomplete without that”, and, worst of all, the more subliminal, nasty message, “Everyone else is having a better time than you are.” I am already weary of the wall-to-wall Christmas advertisements on the TV – painting a picture of the “perfect Christmas”, which is ours for the taking, so long as we lay out our hard-earned cash on X, Y, and Z. Top of my “non-essentials” list this year is a cocktail making machine (£100 off!) and the ubiquitous Quooker.
This year, our immediate family (me, my husband, my son and his partner, and my daughter and her partner) have decided to do a Secret Santa between us, and only buy presents for the children. Which we’ve done in the wider Ellis family for years, thanks to the wisdom of my sister. Because Christmas is (or should be) about giving pleasure, rather than driving ourselves into debt to buy presents they don’t really want for people we only see a couple of times a year. We are opting out of the Christmas rat-race and concentrating on spending quality time together instead. Which I believe is far more conducive to long-term happiness than that cocktail maker.
We also need to remember that not everyone looks forward to Christmas with joy and enthusiasm. For many people, as Nicola Slee and Rosie Miles point out in our first reading, “the way our culture celebrates Christmas marginalises and excludes great numbers of people. These include anyone from any kind of broken or dysfunctional family (and that includes most of us); single people, whether by choice of circumstance; those who are divorced or separated; childless couples who long for children; …children who, for whatever reasons, do not fit the mould of active, acquisitive consumers; gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered folk… the bereaved, and carers of the profoundly ill. All are ostracised from the mythical idyll of Christmas, unable to play happy families.”
It is a sad fact that over Christmas, the Samaritans are snowed under with phone calls from people in the depths of despair. It is their busiest time of year. So I wondered what it might be like, if we decided to do December differently. To not buy in to the fantasy of unremitting domestic bliss and family togetherness. To admit that for many of us, this ain’t necessarily so. Of course, many people do enjoy time with their families over Christmas, but as Nicola Slee writes, “the reality for many of us is far more ambivalent than the fantasy allows.” She continues, “Even if we love our families and get on with them, many of us live in complicated, extended or fragmented family networks, with multiple and diverse groupings to relate to, often geographically dispersed, and this puts a strain on resources and energy…. And then for many of us, relationships with family are complex and difficult, adding to the pressures and tensions.” And of course, many people do not have families at all…
I’m not trying to depress you all – if your experience of Christmas is full of joy and wonder, then I am delighted for you. But I do believe that we need to consider the substantial minority of people in our country who do not look forward to it and are actually quite glad when it’s over.
In my second and third readings, I shared some suggestions as to how it might be possible to approach the Christmas season in another way, from the wonderful book, Doing December Differently, which grew out of a retreat by six friends at Holland House in Cropthorne. Nicola Slee suggests that we “be compassionate – to [ourselves] as well as to [our] relations and friends; cherish and claim limitation, restraint, simplicity and ‘enough-ness’ as sound Advent principles, as much as we can; talk to friends and family about how [we]… would prefer to manage Christmas, explaining what [we] are going to do and why; make connections with people and places very different from [ourselves] and [our] own context; reclaim the positive yet critical engagement with culture from which the original celebration of Christmas emerged, [asking ourselves how] can we celebrate Christmas today so that we engage with culture, yet also contest its hedonism, narcissism and myopia.”
I think her best piece of advice was the last – to try to keep a sense of perspective and “build in good recovery time afterwards. Give up on guilt. Laugh at the god-awful bits. Cherish the unexpected moments of wonder.” Because yes, if we are lucky, there will be unexpected moments of wonder.
If we decide to opt out of the hedonism and consumerism of the season, by claiming those virtues of “restraint, simplicity and ‘enough-ness’”, and decide not to spend more than we can afford on presents they don’t need for people we hardly see from one year’s end to the next, nor on excessive amounts of food and drink to see us through the festive season, or if we choose to source both presents and feast ethically, we may be able to gain a new perspective on what Christmas could mean. Which is the celebration of the birth of a particular child, at a particular time in history, who grew up to be a wonderful preacher and teacher, whose words can still inspire us, more than two thousand years later. As Tony McClelland wrote in a wonderful poem, called You shouldn’t have,
“But for all of the handkerchiefs, bath salts and soap,
there’s something about Christmas, something about hope,
and a birth in a manger, a child in a stable
far from the shops and the over-full table,
where God came among us from heaven above
and showed in that giving, astonishing love.”
Of course, as Unitarians, we may not believe that Jesus was an incarnation of God, except in so far as we all are. Which may give us food for thought. If all of us contain a spark of the divine, perhaps the meaning of Christmas might be that we recognise it in other people. Even the ones we don’t like very much…
Or it could be a time of re-connection with who or what matters most to us – whether that is family or friends, or the blessing of having come through a difficult time this year, or our hopes for the new year that is just around the corner. Or we may prefer to celebrate the Winter Solstice, as the longest night passes, and we turn our faces towards the longer days ahead.
So let us be kind to ourselves, this Christmas season, and try to be kind to others too. Help us to remember, in the words of Debra Faulks’ Litany of Comfort for Blue Christmas, that for some of us, perhaps even for people we know well,
“All around us are bright lights and merry messages
Yet in our heart not all is joyful
We know grief and pain,
We know anger and regret,
We know hopelessness and loneliness,
We know all these feelings, we name them, we live them for such is the human experience
That love presents us with the possibility of being hurt, with the grief of loss,
That connection holds the potential of loneliness and uncertainty,
That forgiveness can begin to heal anger and regret
That being alive is a courageous act in which we engage all of our emotions
…this season brings forth many feelings.”
May we come through the season with our spirits intact, with hope for the year to come.
Closing Words
Spirit of Life and Love,
Our time together is drawing to a close.
May we choose to do December differently,
concentrating on quality rather than quantity,
on love, rather than on consumerism and consumption.
May we share the love we feel,
may we look out for each other,
and may we keep up our hearts,
being grateful for the many blessings in our lives,
now and in the days to come, Amen
Postlude Stella del mattino by Ludovico Einaudi