You’ve worked out a new arrangement for a classic carol. You’ve lined up a shortlist of songs that will work for over-amped children and nicely dressed adults on the Christmas Day service. You’ve even worked out a way of getting some nice elevated worship into your Christmas Eve service - the one night in a year when pubs and churches play host to many of the same people.
Why bother?
According to a whole bunch of clever people (and they don’t get much sharper than N.T. Wright), when it comes to Christian festivals, we’ve got the balance wrong.
“This is our greatest festival,” explains Wright in the brilliant ‘Surprised By Hope’. Only he’s not writing about Christmas. He’s writing about Easter. “Take Christmas away, and in biblical terms you lose two chapters at the front of Matthew and Luke, nothing else. Take Easter away, and you don’t have a New Testament; you don’t have a Christianity; as Paul says, you are still in your sins…”
So, here’s the Pickle: should we be making adjustments to the way we celebrate Christmas? Is it time to turn the power down just a little in favour of making a bigger splash as we celebrate Christ’s death and resurrection? Could this be the solution to our struggle to wrestle Christmas away from the retail sector?