Christmas 2021: Inspiring the hopeless

This year, Christmas is without sentimentality or great joy for an accumulating number of people across the world (Photograph: Dara Mac Donaill/The Irish Times)

In the opening lines of TS Eliot’s poem The Journey of the Magi, one of the three wise men recalls his visit many years earlier to the Christmas Crib and the Christ Child in Bethlehem:

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.

Eliot’s poem recalls that first Christmas as a time of conflict and death, set in a severe climate. The old man recalls “the night-fires going out”, “the lack of shelters”, and “the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly”. It is a poem set in a hostile climate and a violent-ridden atmosphere, written in 1927, in the inter-war years, as a looming financial crisis would soon lead to the Wall Street collapse. It speaks more of death than of birth and is without any hint of the sentimentality found almost a generation later in Eliot’s poem The Cultivation of Christmas Trees (1954), the “accumulated memories of annual emotion … concentrated into a great joy”.

A sanitised story

This year, Christmas is without sentimentality or great joy for an accumulating number of people across the world. It is a Christmas marked by too many crises that are replacing joy with fear and hope with terror: the Christmas crises of Covid, climate change and conflict. Trócaire launched its Christmas appeal this year saying: “The climate crisis, along with Covid-19 and conflict, has resulted in 30 million people currently facing life-threatening food shortages”.

The interconnected nature of this triple-lock crisis was underlined by Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney when he responded to the Russian veto of the Irish motion on climate change at the Security Council, saying, “It is telling that 80 per cent of UN peacekeepers are deployed in countries that are the most exposed to climate change … Where climate change is a factor in exacerbating instability and undermining peace and security, the Security Council should use the tools at its disposal to tackle it”.

Poverty, rather than problems of supply and distribution, explains why so many people in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America remain unvaccinated as the Covid-19 virus continues to mutate and spread. Poverty, climate change and conflict explain why so many migrants have been willing to risk their lives and the lives of their children in the English Channel or the borders of Belarus. Yet, governments with the responsibility and the resources to respond, continue to address the presenting problem rather than tackling its underlying causes.

The Christmas story has been sanitised in its telling and retelling over the centuries. It is set in a cold climate, at a time of oppression and discrimination, corruption and conflict, migration and mass murder. The Christ Child is born in Bethlehem because his parents have been forced to leave Nazareth; Herod’s horrid schemes become known to the visiting Magi and force the family to seek refuge in neighbouring Egypt. Even then, children were the innocent victims of the power games of capricious rulers and despots, unaware or unwilling to face the global consequences of their self-centred decision-making.

Comforting the afflicted

It is a story of rejection, discrimination and marginalisation, of violence without restraint, of poverty caused by the priorities of those who also had the power to change. The victims in the first Christmas story include a single mother and a homeless child. But, in that story, those who are awake to the potential the birth of a child has to change the world are simple shepherds and visitors from afar. As the American theologian Nadia Bolz-Weber says: “The birth of Jesus was not elegantly staged. It is how we experience life – messy, surprising, unexpected, imperfect”. With her innate irreverence, she continues to challenge all who would make Christianity too comfortable and too cosy at Christmas-time, saying, “People don’t leave Christianity because they stop believing in the teachings of Jesus. People leave Christianity because they believe in the teachings of Jesus so much, they can’t stomach being part of an institution that claims to be about that and clearly isn’t”.

In a time of crisis, marked by conflict, Covid and climate change, marked by the plight of refugees, migrants and the homeless, the Churches can put Christ back at the heart of Christmas not by worrying about declining churchgoing figures and finances, but by returning to the priorities of feeding the hungry, comforting the afflicted, loving the outcast, forgiving the wrongdoer, inspiring the hopeless, and emphasising time and again Christ’s core message of loving one another. Then, in the words of TS Eliot,

The accumulated memories of annual emotion
May be concentrated into a great joy …
Because the beginning shall remind us of the end
And the first coming of the second coming.

This full-length editorial is published in The Irish Times on Christmas Eve, 24 December 2021 (p 15)

Praying in Advent 2021: 27, ‘The Little Drummer Boy’

A drum playing workshop for children … ‘The Little Drummer Boy’in a song written 80 years ago in 1941 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

We have arrived at the Advent this morning, and our Christmas celebrations begin this evening. I am celebrating the first Eucharist of Christmas this evening (24 December 2021) in Saint Brendan’s Church, Tarbert, Co Kerry, at 6 p.m. and in Castleton Church, Pallaskenry, Co Limerick, at 8 p.m.

Christmas Eve is going to be yet another busy day in a busy week. But, before this day begins, I am taking some time early this morning for prayer, reflection and reading.

Each morning in my ‘Advent Calendar’ this year, I have been reflecting in these ways:

1, Reflections on a saint remembered in the calendars of the Church during Advent;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

This year’s ‘Advent Calendar’ this year comes to an end this morning [24 December]. Of course, there are no major saints in the principal calendars of the Church today, so I thought I would look at the story of ‘The Little Drummer Boy’.

In the current edition of the Church Times (17/24 December 2021), Bishop Gregory Cameron of St Asaph continues his Advent series with a reflection on the stories associated with ‘The Little Drummer Boy’.

Of course, as he points out, there is no mention of this little boy in either of the two Gospel nativity narratives, Saint Matthew and Saint Luke. Yet, while this particular character is a newcomer to Christmas traditions, music already appears in the Nativity story with the song of the angels.

The story goes that the Little Drummer Boy was left behind by the Magi when ‘they left for their own country by another road’ (see Matthew 2: 12). He first appears 80 years ago, in a song written in 1941 by an American songwriter, Katherine Kennicott Davis.

The song draws on an old Czech story. After the Wise Men had visited, it recounts, they left their gifts and departed. Only then do the Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph become aware of a small figure crying in the stable corner. He is the little drummer boy, part of the entourage, who has been left behind.

The Virgin Mary invites the boy to play for the Infant Jesus, who then rewards him with a smile.

Her song was made popular when it was recorded in 1951 by the Trapp Family Singers – who were later popularised in the film The Sound of Music. For many years after, the song featured in different versions at the top of the Christmas charts, and today ‘The Little Drummer Boy’ is part of the list of favourite Christmas carols.

Bishop Gregory Cameron admits that ‘for some,’ the story of the Little Drummer Boy ‘may be pure schmaltz. For others, the most humble of gifts sincerely given are part of what makes Christmas truly Christmas.’

‘Shall I play for you, pa rum pum pum pum, On my drum?’ … drums in a parade in Rethymnon in Crete (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 1: 67-79 (NRSVA):

67 Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy:
68 ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has looked favourably on his people and redeemed them.
69 He has raised up a mighty saviour for us
in the house of his servant David,
70 as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
71 that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
72 Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
and has remembered his holy covenant,
73 the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,
to grant us 74 that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,
might serve him without fear, 75 in holiness and righteousness
before him all our days.
76 And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
77 to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.
78 By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
79 to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.’

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (24 December 2021) invites us to pray:

Let us pray for the Church of the Province of Central Africa, comprised of dioceses across Botswana, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Yesterday: Archbishop William Temple

Series Concluded

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

‘I played my drum for Him, pa rum pum pum pum played my best for Him’ … lining up for a religious parade in Thessaloniki (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Two chapters in a new book on ‘Birth and the Irish’ published this week

Birth and the Irish … the third in a series of books edited by Professor Salvador Ryan of Maynooth

Patrick Comerford

After a suitable period of gestation, Birth and the Irish: a miscellany, a new book by my friend and colleague, Professor Salvador Ryan of Maynooth, has been published this week by Wordwell Books, Dublin, in time for the Christmas market.

This new book follows the success of Death and the Irish: a Miscellany (2016), and Marriage and the Irish: a Miscellany (2019), and is the third volume in the series ‘Birth, Marriage and Death among the Irish.’

I have contributed to chapters to this book, which explores the experience of birth in Ireland, and among the Irish abroad, from the seventh century to the present day. The 78 chapters or papers reflect on pregnancy and birthing over almost 1,500 years. Salvador has brough together the work of scholars and practitioners from a range of academic disciplines and professions, including anthropology, Celtic studies, folklore, history, linguistics, literature, medicine, midwifery, obstetrics, theology and pastoral care.

The topics covered in this work include an 180-million-to-one birth in 657AD; pregnancy cravings in medieval Ireland; stories of birth and loss from the American Civil War; preventing unwanted pregnancies in 19th century Ireland; birth on the battlefield; childbirth on the Victorian goldfields; the caul in Irish folk belief; predicting the sex of babies – and chickens; infanticide in modern Ireland; maternity and ante-natal care, 1922-1960; foreign adoptions; Jane Russell and her Irish baby; childbirth in Irish film; LGBTQ surrogacy; the spirituality of birthing; birth customs among the Travelling Community; the Doula movement; hypnobirthing; the Mother and Baby Home report, and many more.

My two contributions to this new book, Chapters 23 and 32, are: ‘Albert Grant, the Victorian Fraudster Born in Poverty in Dublin’ (pp 104-107); and ‘Six Boys from Ballaghadreen with the Same Parents … but who was Born the Legitimate Heir?’ (pp 144-148). But … more about these topics in time in some future postings on this blog.

Meanwhile, the publishers promise this new anthology will serve as an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the social, cultural, religious and legal history of pregnancy and birth in Ireland and among the Irish from the earliest times to the present day.

Salvador Ryan is Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Saint Patrick’s College, Maynooth. His other published titles include Death and the Irish and Marriage and the Irish (Wordwell Books), Treasures of Irish Christianity (Veritas) and Religion and Politics in Urban Ireland (Four Courts Press).

● Birth and the Irish: a miscellany, Salvador Ryan (ed), Wordwell Books, Dublin, 288 pp, ISBN: 978-1-913934-61-3; €25.

Birth and the Irish … I have two chapters in this new book edited by Professor Salvador Ryan of Maynooth