In a Bleak Midsummer

As you, God born of God long ago, Son of the true Father, eternally existed
without beginning in the glory of heaven, so your own creation cries with confidence
to you now for their needs, that you send that bright sun to us, and come yourself
to lighten those who long have lived surrounded by shadows and darkness,
here in everlasting night, who, shrouded by sins, have had to endure death’s dark shadow.

(“O Oriens” [“O Dayspring”], Anglo-Saxon Advent Antiphon, translated by Eleanor Parker)

In the Christmas traditions of Northern Europe, Christ comes in the dead of winter when all the world is dead and frozen under a pall of snow. He comes at the hinge of the year when the days are shortest and the darkness reigns.

Like so many Christmas traditions, it is a bit off. The Bible doesn’t really tell us that Jesus was born on December 25, nor, even it it did, is it very likely that Joseph and Mary would have been struggling through snowdrifts on their way to Bethlehem. Judea is not Wessex.

Summer Heat, Spiritual Frost

Nor is it Melbourne. Down here, as heirs of northern Christmases, we might still sing of “snow on snow”, but we are more likely to be worried about bushfires. As I write this, the weather bureau’s prediction for Boxing Day is 39° Celsius (104 °F for US readers).

The theological instincts that made our forbears want to celebrate Christmas at the winter solstice were absolutely right.

White Christmas is an anachronism. And yet despite this, the theological instincts that made our forbears want to celebrate Christmas at the winter solstice were absolutely right. Jesus came to a world in the grip of a spiritual winter. Whether the ground was “hard as iron” human hearts certainly were. We were snowbound by our sin. We preferred the darkness to the light.

But Jesus came anyway. Into the winter of our hostility. Into the long night. A flicker of candlelight shone in a stable in the dark.

It still might have all come to nothing. If Providence had not protected it; if the Spirit had not accompanied it, it would have been snuffed out or ignored. We would still be statues—sightless ice-rimed eyes staring out into an eternal nothing, “without hope and without God in the world” (Eph 2:12).

But the candle caught in the straw. The light became a fire and the winter winds fanned it. It blew out from the stable like an Australian bushfire and it kept burning. The world was changed forever.

Advent Again

For the Anglo-Saxon church calendar, the coming of Christ in midwinter marked both a spiritual and a seasonal change. Henceforth the days would lengthen; the sun would return. “It was fitting that the Creator of eternal light should be conceived and born along with the increase of temporal light,” writes the Venerable Bede.”

Yet they also knew that the Son still needed to come. Winters kept coming. Winter-tide commemorations of his first advent were supposed to make Christians long for his return.

The winter has still not ended. We are still naturally cold toward our God and Saviour.

That should be true for us too. For despite the many great changes wrought by the gospel, the winter has still not ended. As the events of the past year have proven, the world is still in the darkness. We are still naturally cold toward our God and Saviour. We still need him to thaw our hearts by his Spirit. We still need him to bring new life into the frozen hearts of our friends and neighbours. We still need him to shine his light into our midst. We need him to come back, and we need him now.

In recent months, there have been rumours of some kind of thaw. People are beginning to realise how much of the West’s social capital comes from its Christian heritage. Friends speak of a desire to believe, even if they aren’t sure whether they can. We’ll see what comes of it. I hope, in the next couple of weeks to write out some concrete advice those who feel that way.

But in the meantime. Christmas! Draw near to the stable. Think deeply in the original story. Delight in the strange lights and shadows it still casts across our frozen culture. Pray for the light. Go to church. Warm yourself by the Word in the company of believers. Sing hymns. Do all the weird Christmas stuff.

Christ has come.

Original photograph: Yao Kailun, pexels