‘Christmas is a time for thinking about the climate and nature crisis.’
‘Oh no, it isn’t’, you may say. ‘Give us a break from worrying about those things!’ Surely, you think, it’s a time for getting together with family and friends, for giving and receiving gifts, for extravagant decorations and light shows, and for eating and drinking a bit more than is good for us. You might well also remember that it’s about nativity plays, carol services and no-room-at-the-inn for baby Jesus.
But here are a couple of considerations which might point in the opposite direction.
John’s Gospel opens by telling us that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. That’s the human being Jesus of Nazareth, of course. But if the incarnation is about God taking on human flesh, we all know that human bodies come from the earth, from the stuff of the cosmos. So Christmas is about the extraordinary event in which God was willing to become a body – a body of earthly matter: in other words, God is really engaged and concerned about the dust of the earth, the waters of the ocean, the plants and the animals, the galaxies, the dark matter and whatever sentient beings have assumed power and responsibility on every planet. God promises the hope of his own kingdom becoming a reality through Christ, but not just for human beings – ultimately a ‘new heaven and a new earth’ (Revelation 21.1) and the promise to reconcile ‘all things’ to himself in Christ (Colossians 1.20). If God loves the very matter of the universe and is willing to take a place within it, surely we must, at this and every season, love the earth and take our best care of it.
Here’s a second point: At Christmas we are encouraged by many commercial concerns to believe that we will not have had a proper festival without spending lavishly and often beyond our means on gifts, decorations, food, drink and many sophisticated entertainments. Are these commercial concerns our benefactors? Perhaps in the short term they seem to be, because they enable our Christmas festivities, but in the long run not at all. Because they/we are using up the earth’s resources beyond what it can bear, contributing to global warming, creating mountains of waste and probably harming our own health in the process. Too often we think we are making our own choices, but we are, to an extent we are hardly aware of, forced by global corporations into lifestyles that are bad for everyone. And yet, at Christmas, we are honouring someone who ironically called powerful people ‘benefactors’ but clearly didn’t believe they were such (Luke 22.25) and who would, if he were living today, have been highly critical of our rich world conspicuous consumption. But we are as Christians able to make the choice to live more lightly on the earth, to celebrate without excess and so reclaim Christmas from the power of commercial concerns.
Amidst delightful nativity plays and candle-lit carol services alongside the expensive jollity of Christmas, let’s remember that Christmas is not just a lovely story from long ago. Let’s not be misled. It still has relevance to the hard realities of today.When so many Christmas cards announce ‘peace on earth’, a cynic may well laugh, but the celebration actually points us to God’s strong identification with creation, and challenges us to a revolution of attitudes and behaviour, as we seek to follow the deep purposes of Christ, for the sake of the earth.
This piece contains contributions from members of the Theology Subgroup of the Diocesan Environment Working Group. It is suggested that it is viewed alongside “Sustainability and Justice at Christmas” where Catherine Fish, Green Christian Member and contributor to the Theology Subgroup shares her ideas for a more sustainable Advent and Christmas.