Put which Christ back into Christmas?

By Jonathan Bartley -Nov 25, 2005

Not long ago, during a heated debate in the House of Commons, a government minister with responsibility for driving through the latest asylum Bill sat down to give way to a backbencher.

The MP rose to speak, and began to relate the story of a couple known to him, who had been forced to flee from persecution. Unmarried, the woman had found that she was unexpectedly pregnant - which brought stigma in her culture. As a result of the economic plans of a despotic ruler, she was forced to give birth in unsanitary conditions. But things were to get worse. Natives of an occupied country, they soon had to leave home, and cross the border in fear of their lives, threatened by a political programme that resembled localised genocide.

The family, it was suggested, would struggle to qualify for asylum in the UK under the Government's proposals. If they had made it, they would have faced a frosty welcome. But, as the story progressed, it became clear that this was no ordinary family. The MP was narrating the Christmas story - a point not lost on an infuriated Government minister, who herself had a Christian faith.

The political implications of the Christmas period, it seems, are increasingly being recognised. A grassroots campaign against the arbitrary detention of asylum-seekers a few years ago enacted the arrest of the Holy Family outside Yarl's Wood detention centre in Bedford to highlight the conditions in which refugees were held.

As Advent begins, Church Action on Poverty, with other church groups, is challenging people to live as failed asylum-seekers, on just £5 a week. A number of Christian aid agencies are also encouraging us to send a Christmas gift to the developing world, such as a chicken or a goat, on behalf of those we love, instead of filling their stockings with more unwanted clutter.

Such initiatives, however, come at a time when stories abound that Christ is being "taken out of Christmas". Lambeth Council in London announced plans (later withdrawn after a media outcry) to rename its Christmas lights "Winter Lights". Another report suggested that a dozen towns and villages could lose funding for their Christmas festivities because they were deemed "offensive". The examples cited are often exaggerated, and designed to whip up righteous indignation about "political correctness gone mad", and the loss of the country' s religious heritage.

But the Christmas story is offensive - even scandalous. It has a tough message for us all, and in particular for those in positions of power. If it is time to put Christ back into Christmas, it should not be the Jesus of the Christmas lights. Nor should the one who comes back be the sanitised, meek and mild baby in the manger, devoid of challenge and political implication. Rather, it must be the Christ who, from the time of his birth, frightened the political leaders of his day. It should be the Christ whose incarnation drew attention to the most vulnerable, was an advocate on their behalf, and invited us all to stand alongside them.

This article first appeared in the Church Times