Today is a sort-of anniversary for me.  Exactly a year ago, I was travelling along a beautiful country road in the Holywood hills on Christmas Eve. The only unusual thing was my mode of transport – I was using my nose (and other assorted bits of my face).  I had up until a few moments previously been using my trusty Vespa scooter, but a sharp bend, a bit too much throttle, and a gravel-covered road kind of forced the nose/face means of conveyance upon me.

Thankfully no major damage was done, so I dragged the Vespa into a ditch and sat there for maybe 20 minutes, bleeding softly and getting my breath back.  The really strange thing happened next.  A car passed me, then another, then another – maybe 30 or so cars in the time I sat there.  Most of them looked out at me with curiosity as they passed, taking in the dented Vespa and my dented face.  I clearly remember the faces of a few kids, noses pressed to the window, looking out at the funny man in the ditch.  No-one stopped.  Which was OK by me – it allowed me to haul my tattered pride on to the tattered Vespa and wobble slowly home to bleed in peace.

I’ve tried to keep that day in mind as much as possible in the run-up to Christmas this year.  Two basic questions – Why was I going too fast, and why did nobody stop? – might be answered by a third: Why do we rush, hurry, panic, fret and dash so much at this time of year?  I was going too fast because I had a mental To-Do list of all the things I wanted to achieve by Christmas Day. (In the end all of them went undone, and the world still turned, which helps me realise my place in the scheme of things.)  I wonder if even some of the cars that passed by were on missions of similar urgency – with so many things to cram in to the few hours left before Eve became Day, there was no time to stop for idiots in ditches.  And so, many of us end up celebrating a time of profound hope in a state of exhaustion, disappointment and with a bit of a stress-headache.  (Or a sore nose.)

I was thinking about all this yesterday when I stopped for a Burger King at Forestside.  As soon as I turned off the main road, I got stuck in the world’s most never-ending traffic jam just to get a parking space.  Burger King itself was mayhem.  Then I rejoined the gridlock to get back on to the road; everyone was fractious and tense, nudging their cars into every space, refusing to give way, beeping and shouting at everyone else on the road.  I kept thinking “I just want a burger!”  And, “Maybe I should’ve had a sandwich…”  And, “This can’t be right.  We’re getting something wrong, missing the point.”  My ‘Vespa moment’ came back to me – what is the rush?

So, here are my Christmas challenges for you (and for me) this year:

1.  If you’re rushing to squeeze something in to a To-Do list over the next few days, don’t do it.  The world will still turn.

2.  If anyone gets annoyed at you for not doing whatever it was, blame me.

3.  And (at the risk of adding something to your To-Do list), take some time out to remember what the fuss is all about.  Worship.  Be quiet.  Allow the fact to sink in that God looked at this frenzied world (no less chaotic in 1st Century Bethlehem with over-booked inns, I reckon, than in Burger King yesterday) and chose not to keep his distance but to enter, heart and soul and flesh, into the fray.

If you’ve got time and want to reflect on it all, there’s a fabulous chapter about Christmas in Philip Yancey’s book ‘The Jesus I Never Knew’.  (It’s reprinted at http://www.holytrinitynewrochelle.org/yanceychristmas.html if you want to check it out.)  If you haven’t got time for the whole thing, I’ll leave you with his parting shot:

“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation,” an apostle would later write; “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” But the few eyewitnesses on Christmas night saw none of that. They saw an infant struggling to work never-before-used lungs.
Could it be true, this Bethlehem story of a Creator descending to be born on one small planet? If so, it is a story like no other. Never again need we wonder whether what happens on this dirty little tennis ball of a planet matters to the rest of the universe. Little wonder a choir of angels broke out in spontaneous song, disturbing not only a few shepherds but the entire universe.