I can’t remember when Gabrielle and I last went shopping together in the city centre. But this we did the other day. After a while we temporarily split up to pursue our own interests and inevitably I ended up in Fopp. I used to call it my cultural Bermuda Triangle. Whenever I went there all my money seemed to disappear. All these CDs and DVDs and books and you just know you have to have this one or that one or your life will be seriously diminished.
Amazingly I didn’t buy anything but I came away with something else. The sound system was playing ‘Tiger Feet’ by Mud circa. 1974. And I was away to discos long ago not least the annual Christmas Dance at school.
Mud were one of those groups that teenage sophisticates felt obliged to despise. Teenyboppers peddling bubble-gum music to the less enlightened. But deep down we knew that at the Annual Christmas Dance we couldn’t have done with Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. Come in Mud! And Sweet! And Slade! And even the Rubettes! This was their night.
And there I was the other day in Fopp on a cold, grey, miserable Glasgow day deliberately lingering among the displays of CDs, DVDs and books until the fade out in ‘Tiger Feet.’ If it hadn’t been for my mask a co-shopper would have seen me mouthing the words while in my head I was going through all the dance floor moves that once dazzled my contemporaries. Transported I was to the days of feather-cuts, flairs, tank-tops and platform shoes. All of which scandalised my parents and made the wearing all the sweeter. Ah the seventies . . .
Maybe it was the Season that did it. We all carry some Christmas baggage and sometimes it drops, bursts open and out flies the memories whether delightful or painful. Over the years I suppose I’ve tended to de-sentimentalise Christmas. I’ve been involved with too many people who at so many levels find it a very painful experience. Organised fun, nostalgic music and sugary movies are just too much to bear when going through your worst of times.
On the other hand, it’s hard to think of the birth of a baby born in difficult circumstances , as Jesus was, and not feel something. The recent cases of horrific child-abuse that have been at the top of our news bulletins recently have been greeted with understandable outrage. And many a tear has been shed as the stories unfold. Nothing stirs the emotions so much as crimes against the vulnerable. Jesus was not abused as a baby or as child growing up. But in these states He was vulnerable and the wonder is that this is how God chose to reveal Himself to humankind. There is a place for the loving gaze on the manger but also for the sense of awe that Almighty God is as close to us as any child we have known and loved. The carols that spill out from shopping mall sound systems have an unfathomable theology:
‘Lo! within a manger lies
He who built the starry skies.’
‘Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
Hail the Incarnate Deity . . .’
It is said that the original purpose of the Christmas crib was to enable us to reach into those depths of God’s coming amongst us. It is attributed to Francis of Assisi. This was never intended to be a Christmas decoration but a focus for people’s thoughts that they might grasp something of the depths of God’s love for us ‘thus to come from highest bliss/ Down to such a world as this.’
This is something that can unite us all whether we delight in Christmas or dread it. John Betjeman’s poem is so often quoted because it sums up what Christmas is for those who believe:
’The maker of the stars and sea
Became a child on earth for me.’
However we feel about Christmas 2021 we can find hope in a God who is on our side.
