CHRISTMAS IS THERE FOR THE FINDING

I was explaining Christmas to a Muslim the other day. All the way through I was thinking: surely he already knows this; am I just being patronising and he’s being nice?

I think he must have known. We get kids to act it out every year, with tea towels and hay and a plastic baby Jesus. It would be odd for anyone who grew up in the UK not to know.

So, as well as the nativity story, I went on to tell him about its impact, first on a Turkish bishop called Nicholas of Bari, who gave gifts to people in secret. He would put coins in people’s shoes, which, if you think about it, is sweet but (much like Christmas now I suppose) could also be quite annoying.

As well as Santa’s origin story, we talked about Yule. Pagans celebrated the winter solstice by lighting candles, bringing evergreens indoors, singing, and stringing up mistletoe. The idea was that you cut it down from the tree and never let it touch the earth, as a celebration of the overlap between two realms.

Meanwhile in Rome, Saturnalia was the winter festival where slaves exchanged places with their masters for a day, and gifts were given. When Christianity became the de facto state religion, I imagine year by year, Saturnalia was subsumed into Christmas, the wise men bringing their gifts as a good Christian reason to keep doing the same.

My friend confessed that he had been cast as a king in his own school nativity play. Fair enough. I was a sheep, I think. I can’t really remember. So he did know the story then!

Anyway. With gift-giving came the inevitable trudge of more and more gift-buying, gift-selling, and the spectre of a man in a red suit overseeing it all like a benevolent grandad, conjured up from an old memory. Happy Christmas.

I mean imagine if a Turkish bishop fell through the chimney and left coins in your slippers!

He was thankful for the chat. I also wondered whether the mushy conglomeration of different traditions (and there are more of course!) that come together at the end of December might actually be a blessing. I know I talked before about how the sparkly pac-man of modern Christmas seems to have gobbled up the real thing and stolen its name, but perhaps - perhaps it’s more accessible because of those things.

Like an old holy relic, the real thing has been built upon and layered upon for centuries, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still there for the finding.