JOHN DEMPSTER: I believe Christmas is yet another nudge from God

My ‘vaguely designated aunt’ Marion (a friend of my mum) had been child-sitting the night before, and I’d fallen asleep before my parents returned.

Next morning, in the spring sunlight shining through my bedroom curtains, I saw an unfamiliar object on the chest of drawers, blurry in my short-sightedness. Shoving my specs on my nose, I looked again.

It was a box of sweets – but not just any box of sweets. It comprised three linked cardboard compartments each containing a different specimen of the confectioner’s art, which folded together to form a country cottage shape, printed with windows, a door, flowers and ivy growing up the walls.

This touched me deeply. My parents were always generous at Christmas (or Santa was). As I played with my toys, I was excited and grateful, though I didn’t realise how privileged I was. But that box of sweets from Marion, its unexpected loveliness, was special.

Fast forward a few Christmases – I still received presents, but they had lost their ability to delight, or else I had lost my capacity for delight. I was conscious of deep longings which the parcels beneath the tree, no matter how intriguingly wrapped, failed to satisfy. Those disenchanted adolescent Christmases, I mourned the lost magic.

Just why did Marion’s gift make such an impression? I think it was because it was an expression of grace in the Christian sense of the word – something unexpected and unearned, freely given. I believe my joy that morning was a nudge from God, a reminder that God is the Giver of unexpected gifts through sheer grace.

Central to Christmas is Mary’s baby, God’s gift to humanity, unexpected to all but the most perceptive. In Jesus, God became present with us in human form to bring healing, forgiveness, wholeness and hope.

For some of us, Christmas is a time of joy and celebration with those we love, and the strangers we welcome in love. For others, late December is a time of pain and remembered loss. And some of us feel unsatisfied, and ask ‘There must be more to Christmas than this!’

I believe Christmas is yet another nudge from God, an invitation to re-enchantment as we encounter God-with-us, Jesus. We may never have thought of encountering him, but then some blurry perception awakens within us. We reach for the spectacles of faith, of openness to new things, and we realise that the first Christmas gift was given for us.

That box of sweets on the chest of drawers was a tangible expression of Marion’s love for me. And that baby in Mary’s arms is an expression of the profound love the great Giver has for every single one of us.

Happy Christmas!

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