Someone
asked me yesterday what my favourite Christmas Carol was. I answered that there
were a few I really like... and several that I really do not like
terribly much!
He
then asked me what my favourite Christmas ‘song’ was. That was more difficult
to answer... but the answer is definitely not Slade’s ‘I wish it could be
Christmas every Day’!
Nor would it be
"Stop The Cavalry" by Jona Lewis, with its repeated line ‘wish I
could be home for Christmas’. Nope, not my favourite. And yet I find myself
humming it, singing it and whistling it a lot. Possibly that is because it has
been playing in many shops I have been in during the weeks leading up to
Christmas. But then, so have many other Christmas songs. I suspect that this
one has stuck in my mind because I feel I can echo the sentiment.
I wish I could be home for Christmas.
I will, of course, be home
and joining with the family for Christmas dinner etc. But this will be the
first time in (almost) 40 years of marriage that Jane and I will not have been
together on Christmas Eve, nor able to wish each other a Happy Christmas after
the Watchnight Service and exchange our own Christmas gifts, and the first time
in our family’s life when I have not been there first thing on Christmas Day
and we have not been able to open our presents around the tree first thing in
the morning.
I have Christmas Eve and
Christmas Day services in the parish I am currently with in Perthshire while
Jane has the same in her own parish. So we are miles apart.
Our children – although
adults – are not terribly impressed! They have named it ‘Chrexit’!
I could easily (too easily)
begin to feel sorry for myself. But a moment’s thought puts this all into
perspective. A moment’s thought for those facing their first Christmas without
a dear loved one, for those who will be alone all Christmas, for those
who have been driven from their homes into distant lands by terror, war, famine
or drought, for those without a home at all... and so on.
We have made Christmas into a
feast of food, comfort and family. And I love all of that! But it does not
truly represent what the first Christmas involved, and which still sounds
alarmingly contemporary... people far from home, with nowhere to stay, no doubt
anxious and unsettled, eventually driven by the terror instigated by a cruel
ruler into a distant land, and so on...
When I do raise a glass with
my family come 2pm on Christmas Day and when we settle down in the warmth of
home to open our gifts and share in a sumptuous meal, I hope I don’t forget
Mary and Joseph and the infant Jesus and what they faced, nor forget what so
very many are facing this Christmas.
After all, after a brief (and
in the scale of things, utterly insignificant) separation, I will be
at home for Christmas.
