“Glory to God in the highest,” goes the biblical message of Christmas “and on earth peace, goodwill toward men.” This passage represents the central element of Christmas that is accepted and embraced by most of us. Peace and goodwill to others. These are soothing words and apparently simple aims. Yet we know from bitter experience that they are the loftiest of aspirations that in Malta, all too often, are far from our reach.
This year as we cross the miles and open our arms to family and friends during a season of love and kinship, we do so knowing others have been senselessly murdered for daring to indulge in the same simple pleasure. We have only to recall the families of those callously slaughtered in Berlin last Christmas and in London and Manchester a few months ago to be reminded of lives cut short and barbarous acts where hatred was deployed against strangers. This was the antithesis of peace and goodwill.
And if the torment of such distant violence is not unsettling enough, we cannot help recall the brutal and senseless assassination in our midst of Daphne Caruana Galizia only two months ago.
Four months before her death during the general election there was an arms race of rage between the two parties, in which she was a prominent player. Escalated by social media, the political poison between the politicians and the people leached into every aspect of Maltese life.
There was no attempt to say “Let us agree to disagree”. It was a dialogue of the deaf. Malta has had a terrible, inflammatory and traumatic few months of politics.
This is where Maltese must now accept a Christmas prayer and a New Year’s resolution to resist further attempts to divide us or to undermine our tolerance. We must be mature enough to confront the evils of needless divisions and invoke the German-born political philosopher Hannah Arendt’s observation that the greatest challenge to despair and darkness in the world is the spontaneity and freedom that is “guaranteed by each new birth”.
So it is that the Christmas story, the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, lifts our spirits. Lamenting increasing tribalism and the divisions this creates in our society, the need is surely to speak respectfully and openly to one another, instead of resorting to the deliberate and often aggressive closing down of opposing viewpoints. Christmas comes at us like a galloping horse. It is strange how deep this story of the child in a bed of straw goes with us, even if its primary manifestation is the pressure of giving presents. The idea of the baby Jesus as the incarnation of God was one that ultimately conquered the might of Rome and the wisdom of Greece, even though it came to us as a mishap: the very young girl, the older man and no room at the inn.
Our earliest memories of the story are likely to have been nativity plays at school and cribs made out of waxed brown paper by my grandfather, little girls with blue sheets over their heads as Mary, and little boys with fake beards pretending to be Joseph or one of the shepherds.
The child’s sense of the magic of Christmas is a truer thing
Beyond all the great art of the Renaissance Madonnas with Child, the Raphaels and Leonardos, there is all the suburban wrestling with the idea of Christmas, which hooks the child’s imagination like a thing of magic. The sound of Bing Crosby singing about how he is dreaming of a White Christmas, or crooning out, “Come all ye faithful”.
Children love a legend and Christmas is a legend come alive. Think of that rapt, wonderstruck expectation when you were a child of what Father Christmas might have left in those pillow slips or large socks, or whatever you were in the depths of dreaming.
The Christian idea of Christmas is the idea of incarnation made into living flesh. Christmas for children (and sometimes, like a remote memory, for adults) is a time when people who love them give them the material things, the presents they want. I remember miniature castles and toy swords and gorgeous colour plate editions of King Arthur books.
And of course by late adolescence and early adulthood, the magic had receded and I would retreat into my bedroom where I could read the new hardback book demanded from my parents of TC Bridges or GA Henty adventure.
Yet the child’s sense of the magic of Christmas is a truer thing. A lifetime ago they used to play stories on the Rediffusion on Christmas morning for people who had just come back from church. There was a story called ‘The Small One’ about a donkey, which most of the time was pushed around as an insignificant beast, but which all of a sudden – like magic – has his moment in the spotlight as a young woman sits in a manger with a baby and shepherds come and angels sing on high.
They also used to play recordings of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol by Ronald Colman, who was the smoothest man on the silver screen in the 1940s. Remember Scrooge who ends up as a saint of generosity looking after Tiny Tim and the rest of them.
Childhood is the time when we first feel the hush and stillness of carols such as Silent Night or Away in a Manger and, perhaps ever after we hear them in the piping voices of children like an all but lost echo of innocence.
Christmas does give us hope. We recharge and reflect with those we love and care about. We share the spirit of the occasion with strangers. Most of us try to spread some of our good fortune with those who may be hungry or lonely at this time. More than any other, it is the time to display the better angels of our character, confront hatred with love, and dispel fear with hope.
May I wish all my readers a very happy and peaceful Christmas. I shall be spending mine in the English countryside with our daughter and grandchildren, from where I hope to send regular despatches.