Christmas of course starts on Christmas Day and goes on either for twelve days or if you want to be generous for forty days until the Feast of the Presentation of the infant Jesus in the Temple on Feb.2nd. The point is that Christmas isn’t over in a day – it is a season which we celebrate. And yet that season – the twelve days of Christmas – contains some other less happy commemorations – the martyrdom of St Stephen on the 26th, the massacre of the Innocents on the 28th, and the martyrdom of Thomas Becket on the 29th.
In his play about Becket, Murder in the Cathedral, TS Eliot, gives the Archbishop a sermon on Christmas day which reflects on these tragic remembrances to which his own death will shortly add. He draws attention to the fact that in all the masses celebrated on the day of Christ’s birth his last supper and death are also commemorated. As he says, ‘As the world sees it, this is to behave in a strange fashion. For who in the world will both mourn and rejoice at once and for the same reason?’ He goes on to ask whether the peace which the angels promised when they appeared to the shepherds ‘was a disappointment and a cheat’ because the world is so ceaselessly stricken with war and the fear of war?
The peace which both the angels and Jesus himself promised is not peace as the world judges it. It is a peace which incorporates rejoicing and suffering, an experience and awareness of the sinful violence of the world and at the same time a rejoicing in the power of God which can be perfected through weakness and pain. The revelation of God is both tragic and victorious. That is perhaps why Matthew’s gospel contains the story of the massacre of the innocents to point forward to the way in which Jesus’ story will end on the cross. It is why artists like Bruegel paint rather a sinister crowd of soldiers round the stable where the Magi are presenting their gifts to the Christ-child, gifts which included myrrh for his burial,
The peace of Christmas must then be a different kind of peace – not just the cessation of violent activity, nor the reduction of stress by thinking spiritual thoughts, This peace is hinted at as Jesus sleeps in the disciples’ fishing boat during the storm on the lake; it is there when Jesus knows that a particular woman in need has touched his robe in the crowd on the way to Jairus’ house; it is there in the moment when he forgives the men who are crucifying him, as Stephen also forgives those who stone him. It is a peace which will have to inspire the hearts of those who are prepared to work self sacrificially and tirelessly and patiently for many years to bring about reconciliation in the divided places of the world. It is a peace which will have to carry the church through periods of uncertainty and frustration. No wonder Paul calls this a peace which passes all understanding. This peace is a mystery of grace which is threaded through suffering and tragedy, tension and misunderstanding, exhaustion and fear. And Paul says that it is this peace which will guard our hearts and minds. If Christmas is the celebration of the birth of the Prince of Peace then the true wonder of it all is that as we come to the altar and the crib, this peace which passes all understanding is taking up sentry duty in us, to be with us for what ever the new year holds.