Christmas without God

Recent census figures show the numbers identifying themselves with Christianity are falling fast in the UK (irrespective of what the word identification means). The question is: does it make any sense to have Christmas without God?

I went to a nativity service this week and it reminded me, as one child observed recently, they’ve changed the cast but the story’s the same as last year. This tale of angels intervening with strange messages, of wise men travelling from afar, and of shepherds breaking off from washing their socks (as this nativity put it) to go to a stable to behold a baby born by supernatural contraception (a quote from a GCSE student answer) – all declaring the birth of a Messiah – it’s a tale worthy of repetition: of danger, heroism, trust, and improbability. Do we need this any more in our post modern age, the sense of wonder, the sense of worship?

Is it true as Natural law theory suggests, that we are born with "an instinct for God, for something greater than ourselves" (Sister Wendy Beckett)?

The Christmas stories tell of a spiritual dimension to life. Kant called this the Metaphysical, as in the Metaphysics of Morals (his great book); Plato saw the soul as inhabiting a body and then returning at death to the world of the Forms. Aristotle disagreed, and argued that the soul was an aspect of the body, the true self, which never exists apart from the body. However materialist we make ourselves, there remains an element of mystery about the world and ourselves: consciousness, thoughts, the origin of thoughts, the impulses to human action – these things seem to be metaphysical, beyond physics, beyond scientific reach.

Then there is love. What is love? If love came down at Christmas, can we at least reawaken our idea of love this Christmas time, even if we reject the supernatural element? Love has a particular meaning, as in Joseph Fletcher’s Situation Ethics. It is an attitude, not a feeling, which is just as well, because I find my relatives tiresome at times and sometimes want to be a long way away from them at Christmas. Love is about a sense of commitment and sacrifice, of giving not just presents – which it’s good to do, but also of ourselves, our time, our ears to listen to the elderly, or giving our interest to hear the stories of those who don’t say much and who the lively party seems to be ignoring; love has a strict equality “God so loved the world” and everything in it, “that he gave his only Son”; love is about sharing in human experiences and also sympathizing with the situation of others.

It may be that Christianity is in decline, but it doesn’t stop us thinking about mystery and wonder and a sense of the metaphysical – for it is in all the dimensions of love that we really discover the meaning of Christmas – and although we are washed and soaked in the thought processes of materialism, both in its consumer and its philosophical meaning of a life without soul, nonetheless I think we recognise deep down that it is the scientific worldview which is the new mythology – reality is altogether something more transcendent. 

Image: the living room at Garden Cottage