Christmas

 Christmas 2026

Readings

Isaiah 52.7-10

Hebrews 1.1-4

Luke 2.1-20

A few years ago I was struck by an item in the news just before Christmas. It was a tongue in cheek article in the Business section of the daily paper reporting on one of the greatest brand competitions of recent times – Jesus vs. Santa Claus. Well, the surprising thing wasn’t actually that Santa is outselling Jesus by a factor of about a hundred - after all, it’s hard to beat the marketing strategy of a fat guy in a red suit who can persuade you to punish your credit card by pretending to fly around the whole world in a single night, giving everybody exactly what they want – the truly surprising thing about the article that seemed to utterly flabbergast the writer – was that Jesus seemed to be catching up.  Fast.  Nativity scenes still have a long way to go before they’re as popular as Santa’s grotto – but according to this economist, religion’s making a comeback at the checkout.  

So I started thinking about this whole Santa vs. Jesus thing.  Of course, Santa’s got the whole present-giving scene wrapped up (if you’ll pardon the pun) – even small children realise very quickly they’ve got a vested interest in believing in Santa Claus when there’s a robotics kit or an e-scooter at stake. Oh, and another article I read this Christmas - was about an 8 year-old who chose to make a Christmas wishlist presentation to her parents via PowerPoint! But even though Santa and the reindeers and the fake snow and tinsel might hype it up a bit – even though Santa with all the secular mythology and the relentless commercialism of Christmas has added considerably to the guilt and the stress and the anxiety of the age-old practice of giving gifts to those we love - the giving of gifts at Christmas-time is something that Jesus and Santa very much have in common. Not surprising really, since the original Santa was the 3rd century Bishop of Myra, a gentleman named Nicholas who took to heart Jesus’ advice to a rich young man to ‘go and sell all that you have, and give to the poor’.

You know the old saying, ‘it’s the thought that counts’?  Well, I’ve got to tell you something that generations of kids have figured out – it's not just the thought that counts – it’s the gift!  On my bookshelves in my study – at least when I clear away a few layers of paper and stacks of books and used coffee cups and a covering of dust – you can see some little gifts my wife has given me on various occasions – an owl, a Franciscan cross, a set of Chinese chiming balls, a few pieces of pottery – each of these little objects tells me that my wife loves me, that she is thinking about me, and in some way Alison’s gifts for me are a part of herself that she has given to me.  When you give somebody a gift, you remember them, you affirm how much they matter, you say something tangible about your relationship with them.  Santa reminds us of this, and that’s a good thing, and Jesus and Santa are pretty much in agreement about this.  

But the story we celebrate this morning – the story of Jesus’ birth 2,000 years ago – this story tells us that the idea of giving Christmas presents didn’t start with us, it started with God – and it reminds us what God’s gift to us really is.  And I know you already know this, that in the not very remarkable birth of Jesus of Nazareth – 2,000 years ago – we hear a message of love. But it’s not just the thought that counts, it’s the gift itself. God makes this gift of love more tangible and real than any other gift in history, because in this unlikely gift heaven and earth have touched – in the gift of Christmas, God is giving us God’s very own self, made flesh and blood real. 

Well, there are some other news items that have been drawing our attention in Australia these last few weeks - shocking reminders of conflicts and ancient hatreds that normally don’t strike so close to home. Reminders, too, of the fact that our own Australian community is divided about the competing claims of what might bring peace in a broken world. Our political leaders, while united in grief and compassion, struggle to find ways of healing these divisions. NSW Premier Chris Minns, though, hit the mail on the head the other day though when he commented, ‘Peace doesn't happen by accident. It has to be built, one small act of kindness and understanding at a time.’

And wherever we look around the wider world, at the end of 2025, we see the sad politics of selfishness and greed that leave some people with unimaginable wealth and power, and others with despair and ruin. And without trivialising any of this, we know in our hearts that the commercial religion of Santa doesn’t help much. And deep down we also know that Christmas itself can't be good news either, unless it’s also good news for a grieving family in Bondi, or in Ukraine or Gaza. And Christmas can’t really be good news, unless it is also good news for those in our own community who are doing it tough. 

And so we have to look a little bit closer at the other Christmas story, the one about Jesus. It, too, contains much that’s glossy and romantic – stables and animals and mangers – angels bursting into song in the night sky – until we think about the reality of Jesus’ birth, not to a powerful or a wealthy family, but to a couple too poor to grease a few palms to get somewhere to sleep for the night. Born to a scandalously unmarried girl in a rickety shelter surrounded by animals and maybe some surprised and scruffy humans, put to bed in an animal feed trough because his parents couldn’t afford anything better, the Son of God enters the world on the very edge of poverty. 

And the angels? They don’t burst in on the wealthy folk up in Jerusalem or King Herod in his palace, but on a windswept hillside out in the boondocks to a group of the scruffiest and smelliest social pariahs of the day – shepherds living rough out in the bush. And what do they say, the angels? A Saviour is born tonight – to you. That’s what the Gospel claims – that the gift of God in Jesus Christ makes a difference to losers and outcasts and nobodies. 

In Jesus of Nazareth, we see the world’s first Christmas present. Not just the thought that counts, but God taking away all the distance between Godself and the mess and chaos of human life; God remembering us, God wanting to be loved by us, God becoming vulnerable and helpless before us. God, risking everything to give us a birthday present we might reject. And we recognise this, because that’s what it’s like for us when we give gifts to one another; to really give a gift to one we love is to give ourselves, it’s to be vulnerable to the one we desire, to risk rejection.

And that’s good news for shepherds, good news in Sudan and Gaza and Bondi, good news for us – how? In part, I think, because the gift that God gives us in Jesus Christ is the gift that keeps on giving – the gift that transforms us as we dare to receive it. Accept this Christmas present in the spirit that it’s given, and you’ll never look at the world in the same way again. Dare to accept the God who gives God’s own self – dare to believe you are made in the image of that sort of God – and you start to realise that the only way for you to be fully alive, most fully yourself, is to learn to live like that yourself. To take the risk of coming alive by living your own self in love for the world that God loves. The DNA of God that we encounter in Jesus is self-replicating. The God who gives himself away for us blesses us to the extent that we dare to become poor in spirit ourselves, the extent that we dare to stand in solidarity with those who are literally and unambiguously poor. To the extent that we are prepared to mourn with those who literally weep.

But mainly, I think it’s good news because of its sheer, breathtaking extravagance. God desires us and chooses to live among us despite all that’s mean and small and corrupt about us – quite incredibly, despite the selfishness and the meandering and the inconstancy of the human heart - God wants us. Despite the agony of bereavement, the anguish of a feared prognosis, the dull ache of unemployment or homelessness or out-of-control debt – where you are is where God wants to be. Despite the poverty and the dirt and the grief that humans force on one another, the God who created us says to us today, ‘I’m with you, I’m going through what you go through. I will always be with you.’  And within the embrace of that extravagant love we discover ourselves to be blessed, to be those for whom as St Paul writes: ‘neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

And that’s the good news of Christmas.