The ’emotional magnifying glass’ of Christmas

That Christmas is a new animated Netflix film from Richard Curtis, the writer of some of my favourite comedy such as Blackadder, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Notting Hill. (Curtis also wrote Love, Actually which is my least favourite Christmas film, but that’s a subject for another blog).

That Christmas is a decent family film but it was this single quote in it which really struck me:

“I always think that Christmas is a bit like an emotional magnifying glass. If you feel loved and happy, Christmas will make you feel even happier and more loved. But if you feel lonely or unloved, the magnifier gets to work and makes all those bad things feel bigger and worse.”

Joy and difficulty

This rings true to me.  It explains why Christmas is a time of such ambivalence: so joyous for some and so difficult for others.  And many of us experience these things simultaneously – a whole spectrum of emotions jumbled together:

We look forward to time with family, but it’s often stressful.

We cherish loved ones but we miss those who are no longer with us.

There are plenty of parties but loneliness is more intense.

We love considerate gifts but the pain of being forgotten stings all the more.

It’s a time of generosity as well as deep anxiety.

Talking with guests at our weekly community meal at our church over the last few weeks has emphasised to me why so many people find Christmas hard. For many, the emphasis on fun and family magnifies the disappointment, loneliness and lack of love they feel.

Seeing more clearly

But the magnifying glass metaphor is worth digging into more deeply. After all, what do we use magnifying glasses for?  To examine things, to see more clearly and to diagnose elements which cannot be seen with our normal vision.

Christmas can be a time when we simply anesthetize ourselves from pain and difficulty with food, drink and consumerism. But this soon wears off.

The true gift of Christmas is seeing things more clearly and understanding better what being human is all about. This is what classic stories like A Christmas Carol, Its a Wonderful Life, Home Alone and a host of other Christmas films illustrate.

And right at the heart of the answers we find are relationships. This is what life is about: how do we relate to each other and to the One who created us?

Underneath it all, Christmas is both wonderful and painful because relationships are both wonderful and painful.

Foundational story

The foundational story of Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ, is about the relationship between the human and divine. The ultimate force in the universe comes to earth born as a baby: vulnerable and utterly dependent on others. As the singer Bono explains a revelation he had one Christmas Eve:

“It dawned on me for the first time, really…the Christmas story. The idea that God, if there is a force of Love and Logic in the universe, that it would seek to explain itself…by becoming a child born in straw poverty, in shit and straw…a child…Unknowable love, unknowable power describes itself as the most vulnerable…I saw the genius of this, utter genius in picking a particular point in time and deciding to turn on this.”

Disruptive

This is the disruptive, relational intervention which lies at the heart of the Christmas story. God is not distant, he is Immanuel, God with us.

Yes, we may have smothered Christmas in sentimentality, consumerism and material excess, but this underlying story of love incarnate cannot be extinguished. Its pull and hold on us is strong and it continues to echo through the centuries. As the old carol puts it well: