Holy Innocents: popping the Christmas bubble

The end of the first verse of Silent Night, Holy Night ‘sleep in heavenly peace’ or in Welsh ‘cwsg mewn gwynfyd a hedd’ does not sit easily with the story of the death of the Holy Innocents, detailing as it does the cold blooded murder of the infants by the despot Herod the Great. I am afraid I use this deliberately to challenge us, waking us from the slumber of figgy pudding with brandy butter.  I happen to take this as a historical event rather than Matthean midrash. Sometimes it is dismissed because our Evangelist is the only one to have recorded it. We know enough about tyranny not to allow this to happen.

This story brings certain images of Christmas crashing down. We are each one of us captivated by the depictions of the baby in the manger surrounded by doting parents, poor shepherds and wandering magi. This is not unusual given that within our experience, babies often entrance and entrap us offering us a new world of wonder. For a moment, the sleepless nights, anxiety and the impotence every parent feels from time to time are forgotten as we are held spell bound by an image that does not match up to reality.

The danger for us is that we create an image of Christmas that does not stand up to the rigours of reality, and is rendered meaningless or neutered by the manic actions of a despotic monarch or the grind of daily life.

Grief Rekindled at Christmas

Mum died nearly a year ago. I miss her. I did not visit very often. I let the perceived demands of ministry get in the way. I regret that. It stinks a little. It is a failing of mine to want to be needed, and thus not make time for the things that are important.

In August, I wrote these words. They are apt still today.

Whispers and memories intertwine
Breathing colour into the monochrome
alas though only fleetingly
Shadows sit in unfamiliar places
Laughter is caught on the wind
and does not yet return
Even the cat treads gingerly still
For what was hallowed by departure
becomes gloriously ordinary now
Monotony broken by the promise of
fuller living to come

Today is different

The colour takes focus now, and the shadow of death fades a little
Although at certain times it is intense
The hard edge of grief is softer,
yet more painful as its jaggedness on occasion pierces the light
Laughter has returned, but there is an empty space in the room
and it sits on pause momentarily
The smiles return, yet the sadness is deeper
As the resurrection blues hum their now familiar tune

Christmas is a time when the absence of someone through death is particularly poignant. I knew this of course through my ministry as a priest. I know it now because I am a human being, which I realise for some will be an observation that surprises.

On 23 December, which would have been Mum's birthday, my brother and I scattered her in ashes somewhere near Bradfield. In the midst of Storm Barbara, another goodbye was said. 


 
 

Jesse Tree at the Christmas Tree Festival in Holyhead

The Christmas Tree Festival in St Cybi, Holyhead is in full swing.... It is open from 10:30am-3:30pm each day up to and including Christmas Eve.

Each year, I put in a very small Jesse Tree which is dwarfed by the wonderful contribution of other trees and quite rightly so. The Jesse Tree is, in some ways, symbolic of the family tree of Jesus.

This is why each carving symbolises a story. There is an arc for example and a coat of the technicoloured variety. The tablets of the decalogue are there too.

There are others of course, some well known and some not. A bit like our own family tree

It is well worth a look, and a wonder and wander around one of the most ancient, and perhaps holiest buildings in the port town of Holyhead.