WHY DO WE CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS?

‘Christmas is a time for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.’ (Washington Irving 1783-1859)

Habits of Mind: Responding with Wonderment and Awe

We often hear people say that ‘Christmas is a time for families’ and whilst gathering with our nearest and dearest is often a feature of the season, for many this emphasis can feel rather exclusive. So perhaps it is a good time to reflect on the virtue of hospitality which reaches beyond family to our ‘neighbour’ in the wider sense.

Hospitality is about extending our goodwill beyond blood families and enlarging our sphere of concern to those who do not belong to it. It is a constant and consistent theme throughout the Bible. In the Old Testament God commanded the Hebrews to remember their exile and oppression in Egypt and allow it to motivate hospitality to foreigners. ‘You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.’ (Leviticus 19:34 ESV)

And so the Old Testament teaches that we should love others even the ‘stranger’ and ‘do unto others as you’d have them do unto you’. This is an injunction to hospitality and in the New Testament Jesus as a faithful Jew, echoes it again and again in his teaching, most memorably through his parable of the Good Samaritan.

Then in the story of Jesus’ birth, the Christmas story, told in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, we read of the hospitality shown to a young couple by an innkeeper. They are accommodated in a humble stable maybe not fit for a king, but fit for a king who will herald a new vision of a world where both shepherds and kings will find equal hospitality. This Kingdom is open to all and is beautifully expressed in this poem by RS Thomas.

The Kingdom by R. S. Thomas

It’s a long way off but inside it

There are quite different things going on:

Festivals at which the poor man

Is king and the consumptive is

Healed; mirrors in which the blind look

At themselves and love looks at them

Back; and industry is for mending

The bent bones and the minds fractured

By life. It’s a long way off, but to get

There takes no time and admission

Is free, if you purge yourself

Of desire, and present yourself with

Your need only and the simple offering

Of your faith, green as a leaf.

It’s both natural and easy to show hospitality to those we know and love and that’s why teaching the importance of hospitality that reaches beyond family and friends is so important. But we should also be gracious enough to accept hospitality extended to us, even or perhaps especially, when from those beyond our normal ‘circle’. The door of the Kingdom is open to all and not just a select few.  

So, this Christmas, let us find the ‘time for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart’. That is after all, what the Christmas message is all about.

Happy Christmas everyone. 

Christine Crossley