Anticipating Christmas should be an unrivalled joy.
Yet in our time, all the fuss of preparations – selecting the right foodstuffs, choosing appropriate gifts and expecting rarely-encountered little known relatives – can blur the essence of Christmas.
It is sometimes said that Christmas is, above all, a time for children and, when freed from the necessary preoccupations of adulthood, there remains a child in all of us, capable of recognising straight-forward truths; for in the words of John Betjemen:
No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare –
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.
In this timeless certainty of the birth of Jesus in a far-off place at a far-off time, the child-like simplicity of goodness is revealed – found for most of us in time spent with family and friends, and in the excitement of festivities as we take moments to pause and reflect on the year that has passed and that to come.
Being human means that every year is punctuated by sorrows, as well as joys – but in knowing this, what Christmas brings is the renewal of hope, made real by the arrival – in a manger – of a baby.
So, though the world may seem beset by insuperable problems, and each of our lives can bring troubles which, in the moment, appear immense, at Christmas we know again that nothing compares with the eternal power of faithful care, simple kindness and endless love.
I wish everyone in South Holland and the Deepings a peaceful and Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Sir John Hayes
MP for South Holland and the Deepings
