A Vision of Reality
the longer it goes on and the gloomier it ends.
In offices there are decorations and mistletoe and by 2 p.m. on Friday there will be tight directors (who at other times of the year are accepted as quite respectable) making passes at the girls, who don't know whether to be affronted or de- lighted. By 4.30 the place will be deserted and smell horrible. The old, and those without fami- lies on speaking terms, find Christmas a season of peculiar misery. Family parties, starting in gay expectancy, too often end in an orgy of eat- ing, television and boredom. For the clergy it is the worst day of the year, beginning with Mid- night Mass, continuing through processions of churchgoers they will not see again for three months at least, and ending in exhausted com- bat with their children who demand the sort of Christmas other children have, with grown-ups on tap. Some foreign students who get invita- tions from well-meaning families will find them- selves baffled by the incomprehensible tangle into which we have got this celebration of a supreme historical event. What has gone wrong?
Perhaps even now things are on the mend. While Scotland has re-discovered Christmas as a feast after 300 years of rigid suppression and has gone straight into a materialistic coma, in England there are signs of a counter-revolution already on the way.
It was significant that the Christmas number of one of our glossiest glossies was devoted to 'The Two Faces of Christmas,' and despite the sensibilities of advertisers one felt that simpli- city and an attempt at innocence were preferred editorially. And we are not as affluent as we were, so there is less competitive giving, less rivalry in high living.
There is, of course, a basic urge at all times of celebration, to over-indulge all round; but this was more understandable when life was tougher for the rest of the time than it is now. And it is something worth celebrating, whatever view you take of the event itself and the trust- worthiness of the sources for it. The orthodox view is shattering: God was born in the back- yard of an up-country pub, of a dim, respect- able foster-father and a teenage intellectual who had got tangled with him. Later generations have had to question the literal accuracy of the nativity story, with its attendant wise men, shep- herds and donkeys. Many who are attracted by aspects of what this baby, become man, stood for, cannot accept that he is God, because God by definition could not do such a thing. The majority of the world today presumes the whole thing is a put-up job by the Western world to impose its standards and armed superiority on the rest. In this situation it is not easy to be cer- tain, but difficult not to be moved by the story and its implications. At a time when so many things are totally uncertain there seems much to be said for the simple acceptance of that story as it was accepted by those who took part in it.
It is right to celebrate; but this can be done without the compulsion to make oneself ill and unhappy. In fact what is really in keeping with this bizarre act of grace on God's part is a small act of grace on ours: if everyone did some one good thing that they would not otherwise have done, that would be a celebration. It might be seeking out someone who must be lonely or ill, and talking to them; or even ringing them up. It might be a deliberate, corny act of charity, done without too much reflection. Very few people are enabled to love God but more can make a show at loving neighbours, though the habit is not easy to recall: the very effort of re- call may set off a chain reaction. But even if it doesn't, this is the way that Christmas should be celebrated.
Our plight as a collection of individuals is the image of our situation as a nation: and Christ- mas, whether we want it to or not, presents us with the opportunity of reflecting on this, some leisure-with-pay in which we are almost forced to look ourselves in the face. Things, at first sight, are not good with us. Our domestic state is sour. We have been let down by America over our defence plans, and are steadily going down the nuclear league table to end up tying with, perhaps, Italy. When world crises loom up Kennedy talks to Khrushchev, and we stand helpless beyond the fringe. Our education— whatever the efforts that go into it—seems to be getting worse, not better, at all levels. No one seems to be writing great books or plays. Un- employment is already serious and will certainly get much more so. Internationally no one seems to want us on our terms. We hurry like an age- ing society beauty from one reluctant escort to another.
While we can take such knocks seriatim, to sit down and contemplate them over the wreck of a Christmas turkey strains even our well- known powers of taking punishment. Yet it is just now that we need an Athenian capacity for self-knowledge and self-transcendence, as well as a Christian capacity for self-criticism and re- pentence and self-renewal. It is possible that we shall shortly be forced into a position where we are confronted willy-nilly with ourselves. It is not enough to acknowledge we are not that power which once we were. Things are moving fast and no sooner have we absorbed the fact of our present plight than we have entered an- other and worse one. What we need to do is to stand aside and observe the direction in which we are moving, and the next stations on the line.
It is only when we have seen this that we can do something about it. There is little evidence that our leaders are prepared to do anything except grumble when people are rude to us; they are still in a state of concealed hysteria in NS, hich reality is more or less effectively kept out. Per- haps as they themselves celebrate Christmas in comfortable if not luxurious country-houses up and down the land, a vision of reality will break in on them and the sweat will start.
Knowing yourself is a painful and horrible business when it has been covered up for too long. But when the first horror is over, it is pos- sible to start again, re-born and renewed. This may certainly not mean that we retrace our steps back to international `greatness'; but more likely, it might lead us eventually to a position of such integrity that our influence would be out of all proportion to our military power. And the same might also be true of us as individuals. We have the opportunity to climb out of our- selves and become new. That in fact is preciselY what Christ came to say; and that is why Christ- mas is a good moment to take the chance, offered not only in Palestine under the Emperor Augus- tus but continually, moment by moment, in the person of that enigmatic but reassuring presence whom some call the Holy Ghost.
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