Early Quakers held a ‘Testimony against times and seasons’. Although this is not observed with as much rigour in our own day, we still hold to the belief that as all life is sacramental, so all times are holy and none should be marked as more holy than another. Christmas therefore, is a rather more low-key event with us than it is with society generally.


Early Quakers held a ‘Testimony against times and seasons’. Although this is not observed with as much rigour in our own day, we still hold to the belief that as all life is sacramental, so all times are holy and none should be marked as more holy than another. Christmas therefore, is a rather more low-key event with us than it is with society generally.

However, I have always felt that Advent is a rather Quakerly concept. Its sense of quiet and attentive waiting sits well with our understanding of worship and this year, on this, the second Sunday of the time of watching, I have felt a particular draw towards Ekklesia’s 2014 Advent theme of alterNATIVITY (http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/21103)

As the shopping and getting, the planning and scurrying gather pace and the pressures mount to deliver the advertising world’s fantasy of the perfect Christmas, taking time to seek and reflect on an alternative way of seeing the Divine in each other may possibly seem to be self-indulgent. It certainly isn’t easy. But to find what ‘Emmanuel – God with us’ might have to offer and ask of us, can be transformative – for ourselves and for the lonely, poor, unpopular and scapegoated people who seem to live on the edges of our society and our consciousness.

The Christmas myth – in the sense of a story told so as to reveal truth – has been so sentimentalised that to remind ourselves that there was, and remains, a reason for its being set among difficulties and for its cast of characters being largely outsiders and – as we’d say in Cumbria, “off-comed yans”, is increasingly important.

As austerity bites deeper into our social fabric, those with the fewest resources of resistance and the least hold on public esteem are increasingly frightened and dispossessed. As unscrupulous politicians teach us to deepen our mistrust of the ‘other’, the stranger among us is made more vulnerable and we are pushed towards myopia about our shared humanity. This is not the Commonwealth of Heaven that God offers to us and it will not be countered unless we look to find the Divine in the scorned and overlooked.

“Love was the first motion” wrote the 18th century Quaker, John Woolman, and it led him to spend time with the First Nation Americans who had been pushed to the margins by his fellow settlers. It is the same motion which still offers us an alternative way of exploring this time of the year. Mindful watching has the power to change us and direct our line of vision towards a different landscape. It may enable us to resist the colonisation of our perceptions by the vendors of glittery decor and expensive objects, to see past the temptation to amass excess of food and drink and above all, to refuse that semi-exhausted and solipsistic closing of our doors on the world on 25 December.

We could be present at a birth by sharing with those whose lives lie outside the charmed circle, and we might just be able to trail along behind those odd bods in UA Fanthorpe’s poem ‘BC:AD’:

And this was the moment
When a few farmworkers and
Three members of an obscure Persian sect

Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven

*The AlterNATIVITY Advent Calendar: http://christmas.org.uk/docs/calendar/index.html
* Advent: God’s alternative agenda: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/21096
* More on Advent from Ekklesia here: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/advent
* More on Bloomsbury Baptist Church here: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/bloomsburybaptistchurch
* Visit the ALTERnativity website: http://www.alternativity.org.uk

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© Jill Segger is an Associate Director of Ekklesia with particular involvement in editorial issues. She is a freelance writer who contributes to the Church Times, Catholic Herald, Tribune, Reform and The Friend, among other publications. Jill is an active Quaker. See: http://www.journalistdirectory.com/journalist/TQig/Jill-Segger You can follow Jill on Twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/quakerpen