A birth is a new beginning. It can heal old divisions, it can bring hope to the despondent, joy to the sorrowful and peace to the troubled. Often a family that is caught in some kind of stagnancy rallies after a birth and faces its future with confidence and hope.
I often think of the child in Louis MacNeice's poem Prayer Before Birth and the message of hope that this child expresses. This child has no control over what the world will offer, but the child has hopes. It may be worth attempting to examine the meaning of Christ's birthday from Christ's perspective. This Christmas, as we celebrate the birth of Jesus 2,000 years ago, we could ask: what would Jesus expect to be born into today? Does Jesus have any hopes for the world and how he would like to live in it? What would the prayer of the unborn Christ be today? Answering these questions can be daunting. It goes against the dominant way we think today. Many of us think like the Jewish philosopher Jacques Derrida, who had a desire to continually re-interpret a text from a subjective point of view. He believed that the interpretation of any text was an on-going process. Each reader and every generation adds a perspective to how they believe the text should be read and understood. In this schema, the author cannot claim that the text has some definitive or official interpretation.
The world of the 20th century has often buried the authority that took its name from the word for a writer. Every poem, novel, statement and action is interpreted today in the context of the observer. What we write and say is in public hands and public hands have public minds. The author is regularly forced aside to allow the text to grow in the mind of the one who reads it. In a very similar way, each generation of Christians adds its own interpretation to what Christ means and who he is/was.
If MacNeice's unborn child was Jesus, what would he ask of the world into which he was about to be born? What twist can we put on the Christmas story? The first thing would be to ask what importance the new-born Jesus has. The new life that we celebrate each year should be one that is not forgotten like the last morsel of turkey eaten on the feast of St Sylvester. What Christ would certainly ask is that his birth be meaningful beyond novelty.
Each day should be a Christmas. Christ has so much to offer that it is a shame to reduce him to the bleaker moments of life, such as funerals and during bouts of depression. God is the God of the living, not just the God of the dead. It is wonderful to include God at joyful and happy times such as Christmas. It would be fantastic if the joy of God's presence at Christmas outlived the joy of the wonderful box which the expensive presents came in. I am not born, remember me!
There are many today who view Jesus as a reactionary and radical thinker. The problem with revolutionaries throughout history has always been that they have become icons as faces and not as people. We all know what Che Guevara and Chairman Mao looked like - but do we know anything about their thoughts? A face that is familiar is hardly something that Christ would need to become; we all recognise his manifold images. Do we know anything about his thoughts? Take time at Christmas to hear his voice instead. "I have come to bring good news to the poor, to prisoners, freedom, and to those in sorrow, joy!" In 2,000 years that voice has not lost its inspirational power. I am not born, listen to me!
Christmas is a great time of giving. The gifts we exchange should be tokens of the love we have for each other. It is not the pecuniary value of a gift that makes celebrating Christ special; it is the sharing in the love that God among us as gift has brought to us. Jesus never asks anybody to bring gold, frankincense and myrrh, all he asks is we receive both him and each other with a generous heart. I am not born, accept me!
This Christmas, make the feast a time that will heal divisions, bring joy to the sorrowful, hope to the despondent and renewal where there is a stagnancy. And, if none of these wishes are to be granted to Jesus on his birthday, his reaction would probably be the same as the unborn child who prayed: "Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me. Otherwise kill me."
F. Mc.E.