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A day to unwrap the present
 A
version of this piece was published in the Independent
on the 26th December 2000, under the headline ‘Partridges
and pear trees – now on special offer’.
An afterglow or an anticlimax? After the hype and the
hyperactivity that lead up to Christmas Day, the day
that follows holds out to some the promise of a blissful
calm – but to others it will seem merely flat.
Of course, there are further social calls to make or
receive, and the late delivery of cards and possibly
presents to maintain a glimmer of anticipation; but
the peak of the festive season is now behind us and
we are heading back down to the plain reality of the
daily round. The fairy lights are going out all over
Europe. The magic (if magic there was) has gone, and
what remains is yesterday’s leftovers. After the
high, the cold turkey.
Tradition may denote today the second day of Christmas
– and whether or not two turtle doves is a better
gift than a partridge in a pear tree, the song suggests
that the best is still to come – but our consumer
calendar says otherwise. 25 December now effectively
concludes a season that began around 6 November, as
soon as the imaginations of children could be moved
on from fireworks to stockings. Indeed, so long already
have the malls been decked with boughs of holly that
many of us have had enough of ‘merriment’
by now and are impatient for the next event.
Commerce abhors a vacuum, and the stores are quick
to fill it. The ads that punctuate the films that didn’t
quite make Christmas Day announce the immediate advent
of the end-of-season sales. There is relentless effort
to re-excite our appetite for shopping, to turn our
minds to all the things we ‘still really want’.
The prices are dropping with the needles off the tree
– and perhaps a few more purchases will keep us
happy until New Year’s Eve, and another fix of
bonhomie. And then, of course, it’s time to think
of our summer holidays…
One wonders how the mother of Jesus felt the morning
after the exhaustion and euphoria of his birth. The
unexpected intrusion of the shepherds, with their incoherent
talk of angels, was receding into memory. The arrival
of the magi with their curious gifts (which the
church will celebrate in 12 days’ time) lay in
the unknown future, maybe a year or more ahead. What
Mary was left with was an abiding joy, no doubt, but
also, one imagines, a frightening sense of responsibility.
For her, yesterday had been a day not of magic but of
miracle – not only the miracle of new life but
the miracle of the Incarnation – and that miracle
still depended on her and demanded her response, day
after day and (whatever the carols may say about Jesus
not crying) night after night. A child is for life,
after all, not just for Christmas.
And, in his particular case, for much more than life.
In a shocking juxtaposition, the church has chosen to
celebrate the feast of Stephen, the first Christian
martyr, on the day immediately after Christmas. It is
a startling reminder that the inevitable outcome of
the birth of Mary’s son was his execution –
and that the corollary for those who seek the new life
that he offers is their own metaphorical dying. Not
that the story of Stephen is a morbid one, for it was
he who at his trial had a vision of the heavens opened
and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. This is
the triumphant conclusion of the Nativity: that what
was begun on Christmas Day leads, through sacrifice
and suffering, to culminate in glory.
It was on the feast of Stephen, so the carol tells
us, that good King Wenceslas showed kindness to a poor
man gathering winter fuel. And a different tradition
makes today Boxing Day, when the more affluent members
of English society gave presents to their dependants
and employees. Such acts of generosity, not just to
family and friends but to those who truly need it, should
be not the modest expression of a short-lived ‘goodwill’
– a quick nod in the direction of unselfishness
– but the first signs of a settled determination
to love our neighbour as ourselves, as Jesus taught
us to, and did himself.
Our superficial culture, which lives by appetite rather
than reflection, urges us always to be looking forward
to the next sensation, rather than mulling over the
import of what we have already seen or tasted. Christmas
has come and gone, it tells us, and maybe it’s
time to move on. And if Christmas were simply a matter
of the ephemera – of mince pies and tinsel and
a sense of anticipation – it probably would be.
Some things don’t keep, after all, and even the
most festive of spirits can outstay its welcome. But
the substance of this season is something far too weighty
to be dealt with and dismissed so quickly. There is
far more meat on the bone – or far more plums in
the pudding – than we can possibly do justice to
in a day.
Whatever meaning we find in Christmas – as a festival
of life and community in the dark days of winter or
as a commemoration of the dawn of ‘the Light of
the World’ – today is not the day to demand
something new. We have to look forward, of course –
yet not to the next fixture, still less the next acquisition,
but to the continuing living-out of the implications
of yesterday’s celebrations.
© The Independent 2000
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