Waiting for the darkest midnight

We fill December with noise and action. Christmas shopping is rather subdued this year but advertising still tells us it’s a time of excitement, business and fun as presents are selected and wrapped, food purchased and family contacted. For many we know, even in the good years, it was a time of business, dreariness, financial pressures, anxiety, family tensions, loneliness and dread at the long break until the new year.
Advent, the period of four weeks before Christmas, is a time of waiting when the world is silent, as the days grow shorter and the earth sleeps.
It seems we struggle with waiting and silence, especially as we lose touch with the farming and fishing seasons our ancestors took for granted. We have lost this season of expectancy, of waiting for something wonderful, and yet silent, vulnerable, as life changing as the arrival of a child.
This year we have all the pressures of financial demands upon us and great uncertainty for the future. We look with horror at the way the poor are being required to pay for the follies of the rich. We know that something is wrong when gambling with the lives and happiness of others has come so horribly to ground, we are angry at having to pay for banks that borrowed and institutions that lent recklessly.
So what have we in a time of recession? How can we keep our dignity when so much seems to have been taken from us and decisions are being made over our heads?
We have things that cannot be valued in cash or have taken away; self-respect and a Christian heritage that provides some good sense whether or not people have a church practice. We can act by being a bastion to prevent further nastiness being heaped on those least able to carry it and make sure that we do not ask others to carry burdens we will not carry ourselves.
We can fight back by being better.
Advent is, by nature, the time of waiting, preparation and reflection and we may find in the original Gospel stories many things that speak to our situation today.
The birth of Jesus is a story about uncertainty, fragility, dependence on the kindness of strangers and how power can be abused. We have the young couple required to sign on in Bethlehem, regardless of their circumstances, so they can be hit with extra taxes by the international powers that run their country. The husband’s extended family are presumably already overloaded and unable to provide, and the child is born in substandard accommodation.
But even so, they encounter unexpected goodness in the rather disreputable shepherds who recognise that something real is going on in strangers who make the journey from a distance because it is the right thing to do.
In Matthew’s Gospel, there is danger from the local source of power. King Herod was given to large-scale, expensive, building projects – palaces for himself and the tourist-drawing temple in Jerusalem. A fearful man, constantly expecting to be usurped by rival royal families and unable to control his own, he was under pressure from his Roman overlords to keep the peace. He tried to get rid of his local problem by causing grief equally to the poor of Bethlehem. It was his tragedy that the temple he built was, briefly, host to the God it was intended to worship, and yet his reaction was to try and drive God from the earth.
The Gospel stories are about giving. Christmas is about giving without counting the cost, a God who loved people enough to become vulnerable, to accept all that life can throw at humans, and it is about receiving graciously.
We may find ourselves in the picture, retaining our human warmth and dignity and able to consider others, near neighbours or people at a distance dependant on our giving.
Recession hurts here, especially people who were worse off to start with but it’s hurting far worse in developing countries dependent on our support and guiltless of recklessness. Part of our self-respect has been giving for overseas need and this would be the worst time to cut it. Those who can will need to give more this year to cover those who can offer only a token, the widow’s mite. Mites add up too but there is an opening for those who haven’t been hit hardest to take the strain.
Giving goats to development charities are a way to give a gift to a friend at the same time but regular hard cash is needed by aid agencies, for disasters, for letting the special projects happen, for essential staff and for running the show.
The poorest didn’t bring down the economy any more than the developing countries did. The charities at home have more calls on their resources this year, so, rather than kick those who are hurting, there’s the privilege for the comfortable of being able to give, and those of us in the squeezed-but-surviving bracket to give as much as last year, and a bit more if we can. So that everyone, giving or receiving, can keep their humanity.
We can all give our time. Time runs at the same rate for us all but some people feel it heavy on their hands and others feel rushed off their feet. We may not have much cash for presents but presents made by hand, by people who liked us enough to spend time and skills on them, and to think about what we might like to receive, make real gifts – and help the wider environment, while possibly leaving us cash to donate. There are other ways too to give the gift of time, singing carols to bring cheer to others, or looking out for neighbours in the cold weather, all matters we can find in the bare sentences of the Gospels and in the traditions that have grown since.
Giving consideration is another. Advent might be a time to slow down, of not interrupting conversations to answer the mobile; of not running taps when others need the water; of not abusing a parking place needed by disabled drivers; of not avoiding the person who is facing the first Christmas since their bereavement. Giving companionship may be joining with the scruffy shepherds and well-heeled foreigners at the first Christmas who saw that something deep was happening when they visited a neighbour in need.

Advent companionship
Last Christmas, people who went away during the cold snap sometimes left their taps running, a practice that led to a shortage of water. Then, the pipes froze, and those who had caused the water shortage became good neighbours when they realised they were the only ones left with water at the times it did run.
This year, rather than waste water, why not ask a neighbour to check once a day? This will take trust, getting to know people. But they might have more needs than we thought, and they might be more help than could be imagined. This is more than looking in on the elderly, something we all need to do anyway.
It also might help us to realise the cost of Christmas to people we didn’t know as well as we might need to, perhaps a chance to join forces and lower costs for the Christmas table. As well as those who are old, there are people without jobs with a Christmas bonus, who might be glad of the company, and willing to do something in return.

Giving something up…
Like slating politicians, or the poor. The poorest didn’t bring down the economy any more than the developing countries did. It’s easy to blame people, and one of the worse aspects of the last recession was the nastiness it threw up, where those with a small amount of power from above, took it out on the people further down the pecking order.
For every benefit scrounger there are ten people in desperate need. For everyone saddled with a mortgage too big, there is a home and a story. Of course there are plenty of things to criticise and it seems Christians have a duty to criticise the rich who place burdens on the poor they would not carry themselves, the lack of taxation proposed for those who do well, civil servants pensions and TDs salaries. But with an election coming there is a chance. It will be a duty for everyone to vote – a moral duty – and for the best candidate with the skills and calibre to address the problems competently and compassionately and if no one fits the bill, stand yourself or get someone you know who can fit the bill. Christmas is a time for hope in the darkness – let’s not demean it with whinging over the unrecoverable past but savour what it means to be part of community.

Be kind to God’s creatures
Feed the birds. Leave them some water to drink and to bathe. We can all manage a few crumbs. Most of us can manage a bird feeder. It’s cold for them too.
Be kind to the environment. Reuse recycle, make your own presents, buy local, make your own gifts… It may damage the retail trade a bit, but consumerism was always unsustainable.

Finally, save…
Ultimately, advent is time for spiritual regeneration, of taking stock of who we are and how we are using the gift of life. Like all real spiritual exercises, it has practical outcomes.
Christmas comes in unexpected ways today as it came through the recession of the early 1980s, through the famine and illness of the 1840s, through the countless plagues and wars recorded in history. Whether or not people subscribe to the Christian faith today, there is a point in not starting the celebrations too early, of involving the unexpected person, of leaving the candle in the window and the door on the latch in a practical as well as a symbolic way.
For those who are church-goers, Christmas in a cold spell and in the recession is a chance to put into practice what we hear each week about respecting our neighbour. So that the darkest midnight in December becomes the time when the Light of Life comes again into our world.

n Rosemary Power is minister
in County Clare on behalf of the Methodist Church