I grew up in a committed Christian family which went all out each year in celebration of the birth of Jesus. During the lead-up to Christmas, we hosted parties for friends and neighbours, sang carols, read aloud from the prophets and gospels. The nativity scene would be reverently unwrapped from its tissue at the start of Advent and the kings would progress from a far-off bookshelf, arriving by the baby’s side in time for Kings’ Day, 8 January.
On Christmas Day, we gave each other gifts in the manner of these wise and generous men, and feasted on a huge turkey and about a hundred side dishes in honour of the Messiah’s birth. We’d go for a walk, play games and watch a Christmas movie. What we did not do, even once during my childhood, however, was go to church – it just wasn’t something we did.
In this way, my family was the inverse of many British families who lack lifeshaping belief in the incarnate God but show up to church religiously on 25 December each year. While 1 in 100 attend churches on any given Sunday, 1 in 10 will be there between stockings and turkey on this particular day.1 Over the Christmas season, 25% of the population attend some kind of church service for carols, nativity plays, or midnight mass. Because of this seasonal swelling of the ranks, our preaching during this period is laden with weighty potential to reach those seldom within earshot.
For some of us this is wind in the sails of our sermon preparation, for others a daunting squall threatening to capsize us. We live in a time and place in which these opportunities to reach an increasingly secular society are few and far between. No one wants to waste the chance to stir, convict and entice the not-yet-Christians temporarily among us. Or to deepen and strengthen the faith of the regulars, come to that.
