The contradiction of Christmas time

The 'Thinking Anew' column in The Irish Times today.

Michael Commane
While I was cycling on a dark wet November morning, I spotted a large bin truck decorated with Christmas lighting. The fairy lights caught my attention. Just one week earlier I noticed another bin truck, this time a different company. On this occasion the driver of the large vehicle, was using his mobile phone in his hand while driving.

Three days after that, while cycling, I was forced on to the footpath by a passing car. The driver had inadvertently veered to the left. Easy to see why. She was using her mobile phone. I hope my subsequent reaction gave her a sufficient fright never again to use her phone while driving.

And then last Saturday Iarnród Éireann showed a photograph on their Twitter account of a car crash through an automatic level cross barrier at Minish near Killarney in Co. Kerry.

The juxtaposition of the Christmas lights on the large bin truck and the traffic infringements set me thinking of the lead-up to Christmas that is now in full swing. Indeed, from mid-November, aspects of the impending “ding dong merrily on high” cacophony have been evident. The shops and the roads are significantly busier. And every year at this time we shake our heads and complain about the traffic, the shops, and all the commercialisation. 

Does the idea of Advent being a time of preparation for Christmas ever strike us?

It is all some sort of in-your-face dialectic. On the one hand it’s been blared from the rooftops that we should enjoy the Christmas cheer. It’s as if we are being ordered to enjoy the ‘Season of Goodwill’ and yet on the other hand some people, are hell-bent in making Christmas a misery by their selfish behaviour.

But isn’t that the story of life? In many ways Christmas is some sort of paradigm of our lives, our constant search for pleasure or transient gratification, a state of permanent unease.

We seem to live in times of extraordinary contradictions. On the one hand we live in violent times, we hurl insults at each other on social media, and on the other hand we have become political correctness zealots. Write or say the wrong word and you stand condemned. The two extremes often go hand-in-hand. 

Take all the current razzmatazz concerning General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). On the one hand we have to go through extraordinary security hoops when we require information on anything. Yet  never before in the history of mankind has there been such mechanisms of surveillance on us that allows the likes of Facebook and Google, large agencies and states, to know, and to make use of, so much information about us.

In tomorrow’s Gospel (Matthew 3: 1-12) John the Baptist quotes from Isaiah:
“A voice cries in the wilderness:/Prepare a way for the Lord, make his paths straight.”
And then, in the response to the psalm, we read: “In his days justice shall flourish/and peace till the moon fails.” (Psalm 71)

It’s easy to say that we have lost our way with our preparation for Christmas. It’s the ideal topic for a good rant. But does it not seem that what we do with exaggerated Christmas preparation is more or less what we do with all aspects of our lives, an element of talking out of both sides of our mouths at the same time?

John the Baptist said it as it was. He points the way towards Christ. Of course, our world is never going to be a paradise, but it seems at times we run riot with double-speak. And every organisation, every state, every religious tradition is prone to such behaviour. It requires the prophet, the wise person to stand back and question the culture of the day. Because we are all caught up in a prevalent or fashionable tide does not mean it’s what’s best for us.

Of course, Christmas, our preparations for it, have great aspects to it. But it’s too easy to lose all sense of what we are actually celebrating and recalling.

These are days of waiting, days of wonder. Remember the lines of Patrick Kavanagh: “We have tested and tasted too much, lover –/Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.”

Kavanagh's words might  well help us to stop and think for a second as we await our recalling and celebration of the birth of Christ.