Hope is the greatest gift this Christmas
There's a whole lot wrong with the world, writes George Pitcher. But we share a sure and certain hope...
A version of this column appeared in the Daily Express on Monday, December 20, 2021
Some 30 years ago or more, before he attained the national-treasure status that allows him to demand that other national treasures like the Elgin marbles must be returned to Greece, Stephen Fry wrote columns for newspapers.
And he was a class act, just as these days, he says, Britain would be if it returned the marbles. In one column sturdy enough to grace any Greek amphitheatre – for The Listener, not long before it collapsed in a pile of rubble – he wrote elegantly about “Christmas Cheer”.
He used words such as “piffle-bibble” long before they had joined the lexicon of a certain Prime-Minister-to-be and wrote that he didn’t want to be “an old Scroogey-trousers” to his “merry pink-nosed reader”.
But the thrust of what he had to say was indeed somewhat bah-humbug in the tradition of the unreconstructed Ebenezer Scrooge of Christmas Eve: “Christmas to a child is the first terrible proof that to travel hopefully is better than to arrive.”
As if that’s a bad thing! Fry’s point was that Christmases never lived up to his childish expectations, just as we hear everywhere and every year the late Greg Lake intone in his song I Believe in Father Christmas: “I saw him and through his disguise”.
This column may not be as linguistically decorated as Fry’s – more Doric than his Corinthian capitals, perhaps – but its purpose is to say firmly that travelling hopefully is very much what Christmas is all about.
It’s a joyous stage on the human journey, a rollicking celebration of all that is good in humanity while we’re on the move, rather than a destination or a terminus where we’re all meant to jump off the train at a Yuletide station where everything is suddenly all right with the world.
Because it demonstrably isn’t. Everything is very far from perfect with the world. Not that you need reminding, but we’re facing another tidal wave of covid in yet another season of critically packed hospitals and very possibly enforced separation from loved ones again.
And this crisis looms after a year of bad to horrific news – from the near collapse of democracy in the US in the face of Capitol insurrection, to the unspeakable murders of young women and children in the UK.
Light in the darkness
Yet, once again, we gather as families and friends at Christmas-time to affirm that there is still light in the darkness of the world. There really is more than enough love to overcome hate. There really is reason to hold out our gloved hands in defiance of the cold to the broken, the desperate, the lonely, the homeless and the hungry.
And we do so because we know we have hope – we know that, collectively, we can travel on hopefully and not give in to hate and despair. We may not always keep calm, but we carry on – and keep hoping. Just as we always have when our lives and welfare have been threatened by other kinds of darkness, such as war.
Hope is the fuel of the human spirit, which mysteriously proves indomitable and which Christians call the Holy Spirit. Hope is not some vague wish that things will turn out all right in the end – that’s more like optimism. Hope differs from optimism in that it’s an active resource of humanity and one on which we’re constantly building.
Sure and certain hope
And it’s at the heart of our national Christian faith, not just at Christmas but all year round. Our prayer book speaks of a “sure and certain hope of the Resurrection”. But how can hope be sure and certain? Surely hope is what we do when the future is unsure and uncertain? No. What hope says to us is that love and peace will always eventually triumph over darker forces of human nature, however bleak our prospects appear to be.
In that piece from many Christmases ago, Stephen Fry recalled the story of how St Augustine, who brought Christianity to England in the sixth century, converted an Anglo-Saxon king at a banquet. A bird had flown in and out of the vaulted ceiling, and the king remarked that it was like our lives – we come from a dark void, are briefly in the world of warmth and light, then pitched back into the darkness.
Augustine (or “St Gussie”, as Fry called him) retorted that it was precisely the other way round – our lives are dark and dangerous passages in the eternal light that is God’s love. Through the window is heaven.
Heart and mind of the universe
It’s the limitlessness of that love that we celebrate at Christmas. The idea that the heart and mind of the whole universe has opened the window into human existence – and entered in. That the gift of the Christ child is a glimpse of what lies beyond the window, beyond human consciousness and worldly experience.
Not that the Christian story of the Nativity is all sweetness and light. How could it be? This is real human life – the kind that we experience in the world today – that we’re talking about. That’s why, away from all the angels and the innkeepers and the mangers of a thousand childrens’ nativity plays, the story of the Christ’s birth faces up to the dark realities of the world.
It tells of living under cruel oppression (from the Roman Empire); of dislocation (having to travel to Bethlehem for a pointless census); of misogyny, when Mary has to give birth perilously among the animals, very possibly because the baby has been conceived out of wedlock; of infanticide when the despotic Herod feels threatened. And of living as a frightened refugee, when the Holy Family have to flee to Egypt.
Throughout all of that, the story speaks of an unquenchable hope for humankind, a power that only humans can sense and know is at work in the world. That sure and certain hope that whatever the world throws at us, we will prevail.
All humanity can share
And the really good news is that it’s a hope that all humanity can share. Christmas isn’t owned by the Christian Church; it’s the celebration of the hope we share in common, with people of other faiths and none. At Christmas time we’re entitled to hope, to share our hopes and, of course, our fears.
As countless voices affirm as they come together once again this Christmas to sing O Little Town of Bethlehem: “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.”
In the Greek myth, Pandora opens a box – actually a mistranslated jar – and releases untold horrors and curses on mankind. All that is left behind in the container is hope.
The story of Christmas reaffirms how we can put that hope to work in the world. That includes all our hopes for a better future, yes – but also the one sure and certain hope on which we can rely to build that future and which we celebrate this and every Christmas.
So don’t let anyone tell us we’re fools to hope. Because hope is the greatest and most valuable gift of Christmas and it comes free.
The last verse of that Greg Lake song goes: “I wish you a hopeful Christmas...” That’s a very good wish. And a merry one? I truly hope so.
George Pitcher is a visiting fellow at the LSE and an Anglican priest.