"The Work of Christmas"

From the Roman road on Cottam Hill, Yorkshire Wold

It’s New Year’s Eve, and the hounds have had their last walk of 2025.  There is ice underfoot, but with a startlingly blue sky today fading to a soft luminosity as the moon rises, no likelihood of snow.  We actually have very little really wintry weather in this part of Yorkshire;  the last time was 5 years ago, as you see above.  Our neighbours in France messaged us to report they had woken to snow on Christmas morning as this was exciting and very unusual.  Now the Christmas season is travelling towards Epiphany and its close, but before we leave it I would like to look at another U A Fanthorpe Christmas poem.

 The Wicked Fairy at the Manger conflates a fairy-tale with the Nativity, but in so doing points us towards the life and ministry of Christ, Lent and indeed, the crucifixion.  It is a disturbing poem, and an antidote to the Christmas narratives we are used to.  How often have you heard opinions on “the true meaning of Christmas”, which can leave you groaning inwardly at their blandness?  But this poem does fulfil that description …. and it isn’t nice.  We hear the curses of the wicked fairy at the baby Jesus’ cradle, and with her crude language and cynical, malevolent predictions, we wouldn’t wish such a horrible life on anyone.  But wait a moment; we start to recognise the characters, the plot, and the sense of evil makes us shudder.

U. A. FANTHORPE, “THE WICKED FAIRY AT THE MANGER”

My gift for the child:

No wife, kids, home;

No money sense. Unemployable.

Friends, yes. But the wrong sort –

The workshy, women,

Petty infringers of the law, persons

With notifiable diseases,

Poll tax collectors, tarts;

The bottom rung.

His end?

I think we’ll make it

Public, prolonged, painful.

Right, said the baby. That was roughly

What we had in mind.

This is a terrible parody of a blessing.  But the final two lines are the real shockers.  This baby, a holy innocent, coolly assents to this fate.  He - and God - already know that this is the only way to open the gates of the kingdom to us all.  The Fairy has unwittingly outlined what he already knows his life must be, the companions he will transform and redeem, and the agonising death he must endure.  That’s the Wicked Fairy silenced… and us too.

This Christmas was the first when my husband has preached and presided since retirement, and his sermon picks up this theme.  I’m borrowing his words rather than just repeat what he says better.   

“.. Christmas is all about things being turned completely upside down.  Consider: This baby is the Messiah, the long-awaited ruler, descended from the great King David - did you notice how Luke was keen to make that explicit in our Gospel passage?  Surely he ought to be born in a palace, or at least a noble house - not in the stable of an inn, surrounded by animals?  And his parents - surely they ought to be royalty themselves, aristocracy at least, not a young jobbing carpenter and his even younger wife?

The upturning goes on.  The baby grows up, and as an adult the Messiah - whose destiny it is to free Israel from the oppressor, Rome - chooses as his senior leadership team not military leaders, political experts and so on, but a rag-tag bunch of fishermen and the like, and even a tax collector, an employee of the enemy.  He doesn’t network with religious leaders and influential folk, but with the poor, the unclean, the sick, Gentiles, the social outcasts.  At the last, the Messiah ought to be victorious in the battle which secures Israel’s freedom for all time.  Not be executed by the enemy in the most humiliating way imaginable.  But then, the greatest upturning of them all: dead and buried on the Friday, on the Sunday his tomb is empty, and for once death does not have the last word.

The message is clear.  The God revealed in Jesus Christ - whose coming into the world we celebrate today -  is a God who will upturn everything.  And not just for fun, for the heck of it.  But for the sake of justice.  For the sake of truth.  For the sake of peace.  For the sake of freedom.  For the sake of love.  In Christian shorthand, we say: for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

And in that upturning, God   is   relentless.  Social orders. Economic  structures. Political institutions.    Beliefs about being human. . Beliefs about creation.  Moral codes.  Beliefs about God. All things are fair game for God.  

And so are all people. 

And so are all people - you, and me, and everyone.    Whoever we are, wherever we are on the earth, spiritually we’re all upside down.  What that looks like is different for each of us, but I can guarantee you that in some respects and to some degree you - and I and everyone - are spiritually standing on our heads.  And I can guarantee it because it’s just part of what it means to be human.  If in every respect we were standing completely the right way up, we’d be perfect.  And we’re not that.  

We Christians have shorthand word for this too: it’s sin.   We always get hung up on sin as meaning doing wrong.  That’s only a part of it.  Rather, think of sin as simply “being the wrong way up”, “upside down”, which means not the way up God created you, and desires you, to be.   

As I say, that means something different for each of us, but as a starting point, remember that God created us - continually creates us -  for peace, for joy, for creativity, for freedom, for truth, and above all, for love.  And then you can begin to see what your own particular version of upsidedownness might look like.  … the message of the angels is that in the person of Jesus, God himself has entered into our upside-down world, our upside-down lives, my upside-down heart - and yours - and will stop at nothing to get us turned back up the right way. “

Finally, Howard Thurman, the 20th century American black activist, tells us how to get turned back the right way up in his poem, The Work of Christmas.  But it’s not really about just this short season; it’s about the rest of our lives.  Maybe that really is the true meaning of Christmas. 

HOWARD THURMAN, "THE WORK OF CHRISTMAS"

When the song of the angels is stilled,

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flock,

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry,

To release the prisoner,

To rebuild the nations,

To bring peace among brothers,

To make music in the heart.

All blessings to you for 2026,

Valerie