How to find hope in a year filled with despair

This year we might sing the words ‘Tidings of comfort and joy’ to one another with poignancy. ‘God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen’ differs from many other well-loved Christmas carols in one respect: despite being a hopeful song, it’s written in a minor key. There is a sense of melancholy, perhaps a touch of darkness; a feeling that not all is sweetness and light. It holds together the tension of joy and sorrow.

How do we explain the comfort and joy of Jesus Christ in a year when things aren’t comfortable and they definitely haven’t been joyful?

We have an image of Christmas — idyllic, pretty, like the front of a Christmas card. We have our expectations of an ideal holiday. Perhaps we put pressure on ourselves to make it perfect: to be brilliant hosts, buy wonderful gifts and have perfect relationships.

This Christmas may not look idyllic, because it is not meant to. Christmas isn’t a time for escapism, and it’s most certainly not about another world. It is about God in Jesus Christ joining this world, living in the imperfection, and sharing in our suffering. The only thing that makes Christmas perfect is Jesus.

So we talk of comfort — but the birth of a baby in a stable because there is nowhere else to go isn’t what we would normally call comfortable.

A section of the Bayeux Tapestry shows Bishop Odo giving soldiers a sharp whack with his club. The caption reads ‘Bishop Odo comforts the troops’. Hardly comforting to us. But the key here is the syllable ‘fort’. Bishop Odo comforts the troops by fortifying them, giving strength to the soldiers when they feel weak, challenging them to return to battle.

That’s what God does at Christmas: he comforts us — fortifies us — by being with us.