Christmas Day

 

A few years ago, my parents very sensibly downsized, from the family home in the West End of Glasgow to a ground floor apartment in Milngavie. When we visit, there is not room for us to stay with them, and so we make use of the Premier Inn a five-minute’s walk away. This is a popular Premier Inn, the starting point for tourists from all over the world who come to walk the West Highland Way from Milngavie to Fort William.

My mother-in-law is a widow. She lives in a two-bedroom ground-floor barn conversion. When we visit her, some of us might get to sleep in the guest bedroom, but if we all go at the same time, some combination must sleep on the living room floor.

Contrary to popular belief, Jesus was not born in a stable round the back of a fully booked inn, Premier or otherwise. Jesus was born in a family home, almost certainly the home of relatives of Joseph, quite possibly his parents’ home. Families in Bethlehem lived in what was essentially a one-room dwelling. Plenty of people lived in just that way here in the UK, even post- the Second World War, though we, in our comfortable houses, have largely forgotten such a world. Families in Bethlehem slept on the floor of the communal room, with their small herd of goats corralled at one end or on a slightly lower level at night, providing safety for the animals and warmth for the people, just as families have lived in crofts in the Scottish Isles or chalets in the Swiss Alps. But these homes also had a room or place for guests: the ‘katalyma,’ inaccurately rendered the ‘inn’ in several English translations. The lodging for guests might be on the flat roof, no more than a canopy on wooden poles; or else a small room directly off the family room, at the opposite end from where the animals were kept. In an urban home in nearby Jerusalem, a home that might welcome pilgrims several times each year, Jesus would eat a meal with his disciples on the night of his arrest in just such a katalyma, or upper room; but in Bethlehem, guest rooms were smaller.

Joseph is from Bethlehem, but he has been away in Nazareth, working his dowry to marry Mary, whose relatives are from around Bethlehem but whose immediate family had moved north. So, Joseph, who is a builder by trade, has not had time to complete the home in which he and Mary will start out in their married life. And like many couples since, they begin their married life living with his parents. Probably.

Now, they are family, but they would be offered the guest room, for space and a little privacy. But when Mary comes to give birth, while they are there, there is not a secure space for her in the guest room. Perhaps it is on the roof, and in the later stages of pregnancy she could no longer get up and down the ladder. Perhaps it is simply a room that is too small for a woman to give birth in, attended to by the women of the home and the village midwives. In any event, there is not the necessary space, and Jesus—like both of my sons, as it happens—was born in the main room of the house, in the heart of the home. And laid in the manger, probably a bowl carved out of the stone floor, just the right size to cradle a baby.

The theme chosen by the Church of England for Christmas this year is ‘the heart of Christmas.’ And at the heart of the Christmas story is the birth of Jesus, at the heart of a home, into the heart of a family, in the heart of Bethlehem, in the heart of God’s people in the heart of their history. Jesus is at the heart.

Perhaps you have family living with you this Christmas. Or perhaps you hope, Covid restrictions permitting, to travel to stay with relatives. And it may be that room must be found, or made, psychologically as well as physically, internally as well as externally. For others, this time of year is one spent painfully aware of being alone, estranged from fellow humans, not least by bereavement, perhaps estranged from God. For others still, it is a time of demanding work to serve the stranger, with heart and mind and soul and strength, for love—embodied love—of God and neighbour. Room must be found, for forgiveness, or compassion, for ourselves as well as for others. One way or another, there always seems to be so much riding on this time of year, and our resources and our imagination are flexible, but only to a point.

And it is into the actual circumstances of our lives that Jesus is born, again. Not some nostalgic Nativity play where we pretend to be an innkeeper or a donkey, an angel or shepherd, or want to be Mary. But in the very heart of your life, and mine. Whether it feel too empty a room without him or impossibly full of other things, he comes, in his good time, not ours. This Christmas, may you know the joy that he brings, at the heart, to the heart. Joy that washes away our tears of pain and sweat of exhaustion, our fears, and our sense of inadequacy or of not being ready (you’ll never be ready). And may his felt presence come in time to transform every part of your life, from the heart out. Not as guest but as kin. Happy Christmas!