The Dean of Brecon’s Christmas Message

December is a dark and cold month for many, yet also a time when we decorate our homes and Christmas trees with colour in preparation for Christmas. In the commercial world it seems that Christmas preparation and carols begin earlier and earlier. For many, Christmas will be a time of deep anxiety around food and money. Or perhaps you have lost a loved one this year, and Christmas will feel empty and sad.

The Christian Church doesn’t start celebrating Christmas until midnight mass on 24th December. Instead, we have a four-week period of preparation in what we call the Advent season.

Advent is saturated in symbol and meaning, contrasting light and dark, living in the present that anticipates the ‘not yet’ of Christmas. Since November we have heard Christmas carols in our shops, while our worship in Church is filled with Advent carols, not Christmas carols. Advent helps us put the brakes on, to reflect and wait, and not be called to the impatient consumerism that wants us to spend money we don’t have and buy things we don’t need. The theme of Advent is light and darkness and can be a powerful message that speaks into the heart of our lives and a dark world living with wars and conflicts. Advent gives us space and opportunity to look to Christmas with less stress. Advent encourages us to wait for new horizons and new hope, waiting and hoping the main themes of Advent, as we look to the coming of the Light of Christ this Christmas.

The Advent carols that are sung during December are very different to Christmas carols; carols and readings around preparation for Christ’s birth, waiting and expecting the birth. The church is decorated with purple altar covers and purple priest vestments. There are no flowers, and five large candles are placed around the pulpit in the Cathedral. Four purple candles, one lit each Sunday in Advent, and the final central white candle lit on Christmas night, symbolising the coming of the Light of Christ into a dark world.

Usually, the Cathedral is full on Christmas morning for the 11am service, which lasts just over an hour, Christmas carols are sung for the first time, and many people return every year to start Christmas day with a ‘good sing’ that gets them in the mood for the rest of the day. The clergy greet people as they leave with ‘Happy Christmas, have a nice day’. Those leaving will say ‘Thank you for a lovely service’, and I say ‘Good to see you. See you next year’. Yes, I see those who attend the Cathedral every year, as ‘regular worshippers’. You are welcome. It’s your Cathedral. You are welcome because God is a generous and hospitable God who welcomes all.

To celebrate Christmas is to celebrate God’s generosity and welcome, and if we are to be transformed into God’s image then we, for our part, must show generosity and welcome to others, especially the stranger in our midst. This means being generous with our time, our energy, our giving, our hospitality, and generous in the attention we give to others, and be their companion in their life and faith journey. Here is the great mystery that is visible in the generosity we celebrate at Christmas with the coming of Light into the world in the form of the Christ child among us. Be generous with kind words, in overtures of friendship and good will. Even small gestures of kindness and generosity can have big consequences and impact on those we meet and greet. I wish you all a blessed and peaceful Christmas and hope you will find comfort and refreshment in the Christ Child, and make space to take care of yourself because ‘you are enough’ for the God who cherishes you very much. So, after all the shopping, arrangements, planning, cooking, eating and drinking, find time to rest a while and take care of yourselves and those you love.  

Welcome, all wonders in one sight!

Eternity shut in a span; Summer in winter; day in night;

Heaven in earth, and God in man.

Great little one, whose all-embracing birth Lifts earth to heaven,

stoops heav’n to earth.

Written by a 17th Century poet Richard Crashaw of the Holy Nativity of Jesus Christ coming into the world.

The Very Revd Dr Paul Shackerley