Coming back from Television Centre after the Alan Titchmarsh Show yesterday, the taxi driver got talking. After a while he asked me if he could ask an embarrassing question. I agreed and he said: ‘What does “hallowed” mean in the Lord’s Prayer?’ He went on to say that he had said it since childhood, but never thought about what it meant. Talking with a friend a couple of days earlier, he had mentioned this and the friend had said there were lots of things he didn’t understand but was now (as an adult) too embarrassed to follow up. He had seen my ‘interview’ on the telly in the foyer at the BBC and thought he could try asking me.
It was the perfect illustration of what lies behind the Why Wish You a Merry Christmas? book and made me reflect (in the cool light of today) about the child/adult issue at the heart of this week’s debate.
As children grow into adulthood their questions about God (does he exists – and if so, how and where?), the world (why is it the way it is and could it be different?) and us (why do I matter and is there any purpose to my life beyond accumulation of things? Also, how do I live in relationship with other people, deal with conflict, etc…?) grow with them – or should do. It seems to me that for many people the questions about God stay back as childish ones when in every other respect people grow up. So, we have adults thinking about (or, usually, rejecting) Christian faith in a form from childhood that has not been allowed to grow into the adult world.
Some of the ‘magic of Christmas’ stuff that has been flying around the last few days illustrates this. We want to keep Christmas as a childhood nostalgia that makes us feel warm and fuzzy. Fair enough, if that is what you want. But don’t then complain that the Christian Church is selling out if it fails to point out the obvious problems with this response.
I wonder if the reluctance to address the questions I raise in my book is simply a refusal on the part of some adults to grow up and ask adult questions of the faith. What many of my questioners have been saying is that we shouldn’t spoil it for the children – as if we always remain children. Vanessa Feltz put it to me (loudly) that the singing of a children’s carol might be a point of ‘entree’ for someone to the meaning of Christmas – maybe, but if we are still at the ‘point of entree’ thirty years later, surely something hasn’t gone quite right? It seems that the same people who want us to think hard (in the light of Dawkins et al) and be confident in the modern world then want us to turn our brains to blancmange when it comes to the content of Christmas. You can’t have it both ways.
Perhaps we ought to start by challenging (if encouragement doesn’t work) adults to recognise that the baby Jesus grew out of his manger, challenged the world and got himself crucified for being offensive – not for being a cuddly baby who challenges nothing and no one.
So, I will still sing the carols and tell the story and celebrate with everyone else. But Christmas is the beginning of a journey, not the end.
(The taxi driver was surprised to find that ‘hallowed’ meant ‘holy’ and that ‘your name’ refers not to a title/label, but to the character/nature of God. The conversation lasted along time.)
Nick Baines's Blog 
December 2, 2009 at 1:50 pm
“Perhaps we ought to start by challenging (if encouragement doesn’t work) adults to recognise that the baby Jesus grew out of his manger, challenged the world and got himself crucified for being offensive – not for being a cuddly baby who challenges nothing and no one.”
An inspirational message–a good thing for me to reflect on today.
December 2, 2009 at 2:06 pm
This whole debate rears its head inside my own head every year, as it does for many of us who believe in the radical, transforming Jesus. How do we include those who see there is so much more to Christmas than baby Jesus and sparkles, and those who only see the fairytale festival?
I think you have conducted yourself really well – we want our Bishops to say challenging things in a sensible way, and the simple encouragement to people to engage our brains as we ‘do Christmas’ is what is needed (among other things!).
You hit a nail on the head when you point out that people want the C of E to stand for something, to say something – anything! – and yet when it does, people get upset, because assumptions and traditions and ways of life are challenged. Good. We all need to be challenged. And Jesus is nothing if not challenging.
December 2, 2009 at 3:26 pm
I suppose your conversation is what we used to refer to as providence – right person, right time & right place. Next week I am playing host to over 300 schoolchildren as they embark on a ‘journey’ to discover whether or not Jesus goes beyond the manger
December 2, 2009 at 4:06 pm
I think I’ve just found the solution to your ‘problem’ over carols. My granddaughter has learnt, at primary school to sing Silent Night in Spanish. Presumably the words are just as problematical in Spanish, I don’t know, but we can listen to her lovely singing and delight in the music without having to listen to the words – make a joyful noise unto the Lord!
Christmas is a problem though. part of me says, let the world have its Winterval or whatever it wants and lets celebrate Christmas at another time. It always was a mistake grafting it onto a pagan festival and the pagan carols (the Holly and the Ivy!) exacerbate the problem.
I remember trying to lead a Christmas eve communion service with about three church members and thirty people straight from parties on their way home. A wonderful opportunity or a waste of space. Lord knows!
December 2, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Hi Nick, I saw you on Alan’s show yesterday. The make-up dept could have done a better job as they had made you look really pastey!
Who was that ghastly women sat next to you who kept trying to dominate the conversation?
Anne.
December 2, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Anne, I was also feeling a bit jaded by then! The woman was Carol Malone of the News of the World. She played to the audience. Anyway, I think it’s all over now!
December 2, 2009 at 6:19 pm
I think we have to ask what the writer was attempting to convey to his readers or hearers. It may not be possible to tell what actually happened but there are deep truths behine the text which the apologist/preacher has to help the reader/hearer to understand.
Thank-you for your continuing apologia.
JW.
December 2, 2009 at 8:55 pm
Well done Nick, I am sure you are worn out but the bits I saw Jesus was shining through you x.
December 2, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Surely the point of entry argument for carols is important, especially as they also serve as repositories of tradition, conveyors of Biblical truths and Christian cultural bonding vehicles. Dismantling them is not the answer. Using them to point to the underlying truths probably is. For example, why is there an Ox and an Ass in the Nativity scene? Why were the 3 kings gentiles? Why is the infant Jesus depicted as silent? Why is Christ ‘our childhood’s pattern’? Any Biblically literate Christian should be able to use these as entry points for teaching the Faith.
December 2, 2009 at 9:21 pm
Giles, yes. But I think you have misunderstood the point I was making. Vanessa Feltz and others clearly think that singing a simple carol is a point of ‘entree’ and that’s as far as their thinking goes. They don’t want to be told that we might then have to go further. I agree with you about us helping people to go further, but the problem seems to be that (in her eyes) we are wrong to ask people to do so.
December 3, 2009 at 9:40 am
Thank you Nick, I do sympathise. But surely deliberately difficult people should not deflect or dishearten us, should not cause us to rip up everything we have that is good. Surely we need to champion them? To do this we have prayer, the Bible, centuries of examples of Christian lives and teaching, as well as modern creative approaches for evangelising now. You are obviously a great example of this. My only point is that while it’s healthy to be critical to an extent, the sower did not try to change his perfectly good seed just because some of it landed on stony ground.
December 3, 2009 at 10:56 am
David,
I’m not sure the Holly and the Ivy is so problematic. I think using the symbolism we have to remind us of the Gospel is poetic rather than misleading, and as long as we don’t simply stop there, I don’t see much harm in it. But I think of God’s promise every time I see a rainbow, I’m reminded of life and renewal and resurrection by the weeds poking up through the pavement. I don’t worship the moon but that doesn’t mean the moon can’t remind me of God. I don’t worship trees, but comparing the lily-white holly blossoms to Jesus’ goodness or the redness of the berries to the blood he shed for us doesn’t seem like such a stretch, to me, even if the rhyming scheme is a bit strained in modern pronunciation.
As far as appropriating festivals is concerned, sharing bread and wine is hardly a Christian innovation — it’s what Jesus did differently with it that makes the Last Supper special and significant. So I guess my question is, what are the things we do differently with our festivals? What do we do that makes Christmas different from the similarly-timed mid-winter pagan celebrations in various cultures? What do we do that makes it different from the consumerist rituals that surround us today?
Nick,
I do like the magical fairytale as a point of entry. There are days I when grown-up thinking just seems too hard, when I do have to resort to a sort of shorthand of the imagination and emotional appeals just to get out from under the duvet. There are days when logic says “go back to bed” or “give up”, and I desperately need stories of hope to defy that logic. I guess I don’t mind too much if some of the details of the carols aren’t quite right, as long as they can still give me some hope; it’s the underlying message that I’d be concerned about, rather than whether there was or was not an ox. But I’ve always struggled when literalism crops up, and ultimately rejected much of it. For those with a strictly empirical view of the world this could all be far more problematic than it is for me.
I’m going to have to go and read the book, having commented so much.
December 3, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Having already read your book I wrote many comments down on my Telegraph article printout. A grumpy religious affairs journalist more likely.
I feel sure that he had not thorughly read your book. A friend (has a degree in theological studies, former Methodist local preacher and then for several years a Reader in our team of then 5 Readers)in my 80+ age group told me that a church social event this morning that he was very impressed by you on the AT show and he agrees with your viewpoint.
December 3, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Song, I agree with you. This isn’t actually about literalism – or even carols. it is about allowing the story its integrity and coming back to it, living with it, wrestling with it and (appropriately) being challenged by it as well as encouraged. The purpose of the book (as opposed to the way it has been reported) is simply to ask those questions.
December 3, 2009 at 5:24 pm
“it is about allowing the story its integrity and coming back to it..” So we read the carols as poems and some poems are finer and deeper or more intense than others? I think it would help also to detach them from the music – some of which is fine but some banal – so we can read them bare and unadorned.
December 3, 2009 at 5:54 pm
I never called you names; I said you stopped short of equating a candyfloss Jesus with the Tooth Fairy, and that you had a book to sell – and that controversy advertises it all the better. I also said that hymns, like nursery rhymes and fairy tales and pop songs and for that matter, every-day conversations, are rife with hyperbole and understatment, and asked whether you would want to do away with those too. I reiterate that “I, for one, think that the whole argument has been blown out of proportion.”
My Christmas is not a wishy-washy one suffused with angelic choirs singing carols; it’s one that happens every day of the year, and not because I have read your book, either.
Please read my blog again.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/blogs/view/20091202/tanja-cilia/christmas-carols
December 3, 2009 at 6:25 pm
remember me? keep seeing you on the telly. be good to catch up. try this e mail address.
December 3, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Someone I was speaking today, raised the question of your book and what they had read about it. The comment made was that people in positions of authority should be careful what they say – as it can be taken out of context or misconstrued.
When challenged, they admitted that they had not read the book, rather they were relying on the impression they had received from media coverage and comments from parishioners.
I suppose I should have left it at that, but I felt that such a provocative comment needed some unpacking – why should media coverage taken out of context be more reliable than perhaps the authors word?
We had a discussion on why, if the Church is continually being challenged to ‘get it’ in terms of relating to modern times and conditions, why would a Bishop who was engaging with the media have to watch their P’s & Q’s?
This provoked a lively discussion, which covered Christmas – I objected to the term, as as far as I am aware we are actually in Advent and Christmas (marking the Birth of Christ) is some weeks away.
In the end, their position was that they dealt with people on a day to day basis, who came into their church, some of whom are unchurched – the intention was to support them in coming in – and to get the message across about God if they chose to ask or wished to know more about it. They were concerned about the impact of the coverage given to the Carols on these people!
On reflection – they might have a point, although I may not agree with it.
It is clear to me, that even those who I expect to be more informed, might not be so. Reliance on the truth of efficacy of media coverage is always problematic without checking your facts.
The good thing – is that people are actually talking about the issues which can’t be a bad thing.
December 3, 2009 at 8:48 pm
Tanja, thank you for responding to my response to your blog – which I have, indeed, re-read. I didn’t say you called me names. What has annoyed me about almost every media comment on this is that it is based on the Telegraph article and not what I actually say in the book. Selling books is actually not my concern: I wrote it and the publisher can flog it – the controversy is about selective quotation in order to create a story and it has surprised me as much as anyone else.
So, I agree with you that the argument has been blown up out of all proportion. The sad thing is that the argument is about a headline and not about what I have actually written about in the book.
Thanks again for your response – and happy Christmas.
December 3, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Thanks, Ernest. The problem is that if you are too careful with everything you say/write, you end up saying/writing nothing. I said to someone today (in relation to all this stuff) that I could quote from Mein Kampf in such a way as to make Adolf Hitler seem like a benign cat lover. There is no preventing journalists spotting a story and quoting accordingly.
December 3, 2009 at 10:37 pm
“The taxi driver was surprised to find that ‘hallowed’ meant ‘holy’ and that ‘your name’ refers not to a title/label, but to the character/nature of God.”
Really? God’s name is already holy. “hallowed” means “kept holy, treated with reverence”. Contextually, God’s “name” refers primarily to YHWH, not to God’s “character/nature” (which is also holy).
December 4, 2009 at 12:28 pm
You know the devil can cite scripture to suit his purpose; as a writer, I often use understatement and hyperbole to get my point across.
The quotes I used were yours but I used them as a springboard to point out that language mutates and evolves – the carols are entrenched in the traditon just as figures of speech are, in the language, and it is not because of them that the meaning of Christmas palls. Indeed if push came to shove I would be more inclined to blame the ‘bears and snakes’ in the Nativity Plays for the rot.
Just for the record, I was not lazy, for a wrote a commentary; most of the sources I checked went for verbatim plaigiarism and left it at that.
Have a blessed Christmas.
December 4, 2009 at 3:13 pm
“I could quote from Mein Kampf in such a way as to make Adolf Hitler seem like a benign cat lover” Du lieber Himmel! Why, I thought the Fuehrer was a cat lover. But if you are careful rather than too careful you will write something that people will read in a quiet spirit recognising your own. As Henry James remarked: “There are too many reasons why newspapers must live”.
December 4, 2009 at 10:04 pm
I take your point, Peter. But I did not have the media in mind when I wrote the book.
December 5, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Hello Bishop Nick,
I saw you on the BBC News on Monday talking about Christmas Carols. At the time, I had the feeling that the issue was overthought by a bishop who was displaying that Autistic Trait. However, having read the comments on the Internet, it seems to have increased my dislike for the media, I now feel that I should read your book and then form my own opinion upon it. I always like to know all the Information not just bits. When telling other people things I adopt the same policy. Fullness of Info, First, Diplomacy 2nd and then Respect there decision and/or opinon.
I was diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome (a form of Autism) when I was 11 years old and deliver Personal Perspective Training. I would really like to deliver my training in your presence on one of the days I am scheduled run it in London.
Changing the Subject Slightly, One visiting preacher at my church said that the 10 commandments are full of loopholes, where as Christ’s 2 have no loopholes, I have come to the conclusion that Speed Cameras are Immoral and the the Police forces around the country are not adhering to the Ten Commandments, I am not talking about 1, 2 and 3 here, it is Commandment Number 9 – They are Lying to us as they tell us there is a Speed Camera ahead and there simply isn’t one there. Those Temporary Things Simply Do not Count.
Many Thanks,
Anthony Tull
December 7, 2009 at 11:20 am
It is interesting to see how much commentary your message has caused. I have heard coverage on local radio from Head Teachers, even a leader of the URC Church in London and the South East. The Sunday Post even featured you (nice Picture) with some adverse comments on your views. Of course, their stereotype is that of a Christmas Jobsworth, wanting to spoil it for all. Grumpy Bishop featured somewhere.
On a serious note, most commentary was that the Carols concerned gave people the ‘feel good’ factor, and what is wrong with that?
It looks like the story won’t die down for a while – still, you have broad shoulders and I am sure that the burden is light for you, if you are able to engage in some constructive conversations with the media.
December 7, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Thanks, Ernest. On your second point, there is nothing wrong with that. But that isn’t the whole story – and certainly wasn’t the point of my book.
My shoulders are broad, but the burden has not been light!
December 8, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Nick, I have ben following all of this with interest. I had a fascinating Baptism preparation encounter with someone recently who had really thought about what she was going to say to her 4 year old about Santa Claus and Jesus. “I don’t want her growing up to think that, like Santa, Jesus doesn’t exist in real life.” were her words – and this from an occasional attender at church (at best). I think some people out there (like your taxi driver)do think about meaning and what they’d like to pass on to their children about Christmas. Thank you for making us all think a little more about this.
I had a wonderful conversation with my very thoughtful ten-year-old the other day. He said he thinks that children have more open minds than adults and that to him, growing up seems to involve losing something of that openness (I paraphrase!)He is perceptive enough to see that he has little enough time left as a child and is reluctant to let it slip away. Paradoxically I think this shows a mature self-awareness that some adults I meet never achieve.
I completely agree that many adults have much growing up to do in matters of faith, but we should never forget that Jesus urged his disciples to be like a child to enter the kingdom. For me this does not mean remaining at the “point of entree” for 30 years as you so rightly say, but isn’t there something in retaining a child-like sense of wonder at the astonishing fact of the incarnation of God himself as a helpless baby? I remember gazing at my (now aged 10) son when he was minutes old, and thinking exactly that. Can we be both child-like and mature in matters of faith simultaneously?
December 12, 2009 at 12:39 pm
[…] media | Tags: Archbishop of Canterbury, Ethics, Telegraph | Leave a Comment Having a had a fairly rubbish time with the media in the last couple of weeks, I was interested to see someone else possibly getting […]
December 17, 2009 at 11:56 am
Oh just an appendage to the last comment i left where i mayhave suggested that the press coverage was ok as “no publicity is bad publicity”mantra is ok as you sell more books. This would be wrong as a Bishop is not a Dan Brown but a man in ministry with a mission to engage and challenge socially and spitually;to this end of course the type of coverage is crucially important and althouh the Bish cannot be seen to be moaning and whining I AM! we deserve more and better!right that’s about it.JV