A Christmas Message Based on the Prophetic Lyrics of Mr Roy Wood

By way of contrast to the priorities of my grandfather, the rise of the toy-and treat-obsessed society which wants the materialism of Christmas every day of the year reflect a society where individuals increasingly find their value and meaning in what they can do - or, more often, buy - for themselves.   This love is directed inwards to the gratification of the self.  That is where value and meaning are found.  That is where the restless heart is supposed to find rest, although the spread of Christmas to the whole of the year would indicate that such rest has proved elusive.  In fact, the ubiquity of the Christmas spirit arguably witnesses to the extension of the Augustinian childhood of unrestricted, unapologetic and frequently unchecked self-love to the whole length of life and the very fabric of society.  To adapt the Roy Wood lyric, we really do wish it could be Christmas everyday.

The irony of the Christian Christmas is that the Christ child comes not because of any need of his own or any desire to fulfill a selfish or inwardly directed want; this child, the child in the manger, considers it not robbery to be equal with God and yet humbles himself by taking the form of a servant in order to be obedient even to death on the cross. All of this is done for those who not only did not deserve it but who despise the very thought of grace. For the strong and the self-sufficient to be shown their need and to be delivered therefrom by a nobody who begins life in a manger and ends it on a cross is a profound insult to everything we hold dear. The world looks on - now as then - and see this all as so much childishness; the tragedy, of course, is that it is the unsuspecting world which is truly childish.  Read it all HERE