Away With the Manger?

There are some things that often seem more sacred than God. One of these is the ‘children’s favourite’ Christmas carol.  Just as I sang it seventy years ago, and probably my parents sang it nearly a hundred years ago, still today Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without little children singing ‘Away in a manger’ to the delight of their admiring parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts.

Lovely, if you don’t stop and think of the words. But if you do, are we sure we want our children to be singing this kind of thing?

The first line is obscure. Where is this ‘away’ in a manger? The point of the Christmas message is that God has come close to us, so why give the impression that it happened far away? And what’s a ‘manger’ anyway? I suppose most of us know that it is a feeding trough for cattle, but even when I was a child the word didn’t belong in everyday language. To most people, ‘manger’ is just a special name for whatever it was the baby Jesus lay in. And what does ‘no crib for a bed’ mean? Even I as a child had no idea what that meant. What we call it is a cradle or a cot. A ‘crib’ is something you use to cheat in an exam!

Then there’s this ‘look down from the sky’ business. Do we really want children to think that Jesus is up there among the stars and the planets? Even worse, do we want them to think that only up in heaven will they be able to live with Jesus, and even then only if they are ‘fit’ to live with him?

But the worst bit is in the second verse: ‘but little Lord Jesus no crying he makes’. What an unnatural baby! I suppose the lesson of this is supposed to be that Jesus, being perfect, never cried because crying is wrong and good children must always be like Jesus and never cry. What sadistic Victorian thought that up?

Perhaps the day will come when parents and teachers will suddenly wake up and realise what an awful song this is to teach to children. In the meantime, we can only hope that the children of today and tomorrow have no idea of what it all means anyway!

Born of the Virgin Mary...

One of my favourite carols has the verse:
Angels and archangels
may have gathered there,
cherubim and seraphim
thronged the air,
but his mother Mary
in her maiden bliss
worshipped the Beloved
with a kiss.

There was a glory, a mystery, about the birth of Jesus - the Creator of the universe in a little baby. The poet Studdert Kennedy uses the striking phrase 'the five little fingers of God'. Paintings portray angels gathered around the stable. Of course they were invisible, or visible only to the imagination, but that humble stable (or wherever it was) shone with the glory of God.

Yet isn't this true of every birth? I have never had the experience myself, but to hold your own new-born child in your arms, especially in the company of the one you love, must be the nearest human beings get to heavenly bliss. Surely the magic of the Christmas story is that it says something significant and wonderful about the birth of a child - any child.

I believe that Jesus was the Son of God in the sense that in him human nature was most completely in tune with the nature of God. In that sense Jesus is 'His only Son, our Lord', but what it really says to me is that God is like Jesus - loving, giving, vulnerable and in the end indestructible because whatever happens love keeps bouncing back.

'In her maiden bliss': I don't believe in the Virgin Birth as a fact. It is the kind of myth that often in the ancient world attached itself to significant people. But birth itself, any birth, is a miracle. And I like to think of Mary, whether married or not, as a young innocent girl knowing for the first time the fearful joy of bringing a new life into the world from her own body.

God came into the world through the womb of Mary, yes. But God constantly comes into the world, not only when a child is born but whenever a human being is attuned to the loving nature of God. God can be born in you and me, men or women, young or old, and the loving, healing, challenging Christ walks the earth again.