From the Religious Studies Coordinator of a Catholic Senior Secondary School
Prayer written for the last school newsletter of the year in a moment of panic
In the most humble of places
In the silence and the holiness of the night
Surrounded by people of good will
Jesus Christ was born into our world
May we discover again this Christmas
In our lives and in our world
The gifts that Jesus brings:
Peace
Gentleness
Compassion
Love
May we be surprised
As we find these gifts
In the most unlikely of places
And in the most unlikely of people.
Amen
Every year at this time I have two rituals which I have kept for over twenty years. The first always leads to the second. For me, like most teachers, as we desperately try to bring to a conclusion the year’s work before the Christmas holidays begin, I am always insanely busy. To the extent that even the school Kris Kringle, which is an attempt to instill the season’s cheer into an otherwise frantic and tense work place environment, becomes just another job that I have to get done. “Ho, Ho, Ho” I mockingly cry as I waste precious minutes in the local Two Dollar Shop when I could be far more gainfully employed.
Ironically, as the Religious Education Coordinator at a Melbourne Catholic school, my responsibility to organise end of year Christmas liturgies for school, student, and staff communities adds to my end of year stress. And it’s this annual responsibility that, more than anything else, necessitates the first of my rituals: the yearly asking of myself the question, “What is the deep meaning of Christmas?” We spend so much time on the celebrations and rituals, on the ‘doing’ of Christmas, that I find myself out of necessity having to stand back at some point to ask, “Why?” Once I have a rationale for my actions, I’m far happier spending more than the prescribed eight hour working day on its accomplishment.
A couple of minutes panic
The above prayer is the result of this year’s musings, although I use the word liberally! Actually, it was the result of a couple of minutes panic when I realised I needed a prayer for the final school newsletter just moments before it went to print. The alternative – a rather insipid piece dredged from ‘files past’ – would hardly do. So, like the inspiration one gets when buying last minute Christmas presents, this became the kairos moment for the first of my annual rituals.
The words are simple. Christmas is about all that is good - and peace, gentleness, compassion and love are about as good as you can get. But there’s nothing uniquely Christmas about these words. It’s the context which makes the season. And the hymn Silent Night always captures for me the beauty of innocence and humility that marks this season. Late yesterday afternoon, a young primary school student – the daughter of a colleague – stood in my office, as I furiously tapped away at my keyboard, and began singing the first verse. I physically had to stop. I couldn’t ignore her any longer. You can never be that busy that you haven’t got time to listen to a child sing Silent Night.
It’s naivety to believe that things can be truly good, with no shade of compromise or evil intent. Just innocence and humility. Christmas is best understood by people of such goodwill: children, shepherds, animals. They were the first to receive the angel’s message. As I explore the shops in search of gifts, I’ve been captivated by recent artistic representations of the nativity scene. A whole menagerie of characters representing Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the shepherds and the wise men. Not all are human representations in these modern interpretations of this ancient Christian story, but they are all united in their representations of innocent beauty and naïve happiness. This is a good story that touches the heart of the human experience; however, the younger, more innocent, more naïve, more humble you are, the more you get it.
Christmas won’t be found on commercial television stations in prime time or in large shopping centres. It comes in the unexpected: people and places. Christmas doesn’t come around annually as a matter of course. Christmas creeps up behind you and surprises you with an unanticipated act of kindness from a most unlikely source. A gift from a girl I didn’t teach; an email from a student that moved me to tears; thoughtful words of thanks put together by a whole class. Christmas is done spontaneously, often without even knowing that you’ve done it. I like to think of Jesus being born again and again and again each year, obscured by the noise, lights, and public face of the season, and the rest of the world keeps going without even noticing the significance of these selfless, generous, humble acts of self-giving that are done to us by the unexpected other. And for a teacher, the greatest Christmas gift is a student who stops at the end of the year and says, in some form, “Thank you.” So out of context, it always surprises.
Christmas Ritual: A Christmas Carol
Its usually at this point that I’m moved to read Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol again – the second of my annual Christmas rituals. My musings always lead me back to this literary masterpiece. Every year I begin the season feeling like Scrooge. Merry Christmas? Bah! Humbug! Work, time and financial constraints, mixed with the ever present self doubt and fear of where community and caring may lead, don’t so much create Scrooge’s despising of Christmas in me, as contribute to dampen his nephew Bob’s innocent happiness and naïve optimism for the season. It can’t possibly be so good, so it won’t be. Both attitudes compete in the pre-Christmas rush, but the dominant negative seems destined to become a self fulfilling prophecy.
So every year, I’m strangely happy to meet again Marley’s ghost. This year was having to write the Christmas prayer in a matter of minutes. The realisation that time had run out; that I had let myself get too busy to do what was most important. As painful as it may be, we all need to be haunted by our ghosts: past, present and future. If we ignore them, we’re doomed to be chained to our attitudinal mistakes as Scrooge was. It’s the ghosts that refocus us and our energies. To enter into the spirit of Christmas, not just with those we love, but also those with whom we live and work and meet fleetingly. They are our community, whether we love them or not. The ghosts jolt us from our complacency and force us to look beyond ourselves and the immediacy of our own little world to surprise others with unexpected gifts of Christmas joy. To me there is no greater sense of Christmas than to walk away from a stranger with a smile, knowing you have done something to make them happy; confident that the gift can’t be compromised by return generosity.
And so I finish my musings with a Christmas wish. The one that Scrooge gave to his nephew, after his transformation, at the end of the story. Not the turkey, but “A Merry Christmas!” That’s all I want once again. That others may be able to say of me what was said of Scrooge, “He knew how to keep Christmas well!” And that “God may bless Us, Every One!”*
*With special thanks to Bob’s son, Tiny Tim, the unlikely, obscure, innocent child, who on uttering these words, naively understood what Christmas was all about in his poverty and imperfection.