Tea Towels, Snow Patrol and Together for Christmas

What is it about Christmas?

I don’t mean the hype and the tripe – I mean what is about Christmas that sustains the magic it casts over us?

Take last night for example. I attended my daughters Christmas play for the Rainbows, Brownies and Girl Guides. Some of the little ones were dressed wearing the humble tea towel round their heads. How many times have we all seen that over the years? It never changes. If you need a Christmas prop, then the tea towel will always oblige. Tied as usual with a piece of string it sits there perfectly posed as the youngsters go about acting and playing their part.

And then I thought.

How appropriate that something as ordinary and humble as a tea towel should become an abiding memory of the Christmas story. As if its purpose speaks beyond what it is. How wrong it would be to replace the towel with a crown or hat. Its simplicity reminds us and retells the story of how God invades time and space in humility and vulnerability. When all is stripped away, the power of the Christmas story is left to tell its tale. And more.

When everything is stripped away and we’re left looking into a feeding trough into which the Christ Child is laid, its powerful story pulls us together. Here we see reconciliation, togetherness, and hope. As we gaze across an empty space and see a baby crying in a manger we see the extraordinary lengths to which God is prepared to travel in order to mend a broken world. What is it about a baby that brings warring factions together?

Outside of course the madness continues. Tranquillity gives way to tinsel and tack, but then, out of the blue I was redeemed in a most unusual way, when the Snow Patrol and their song Chasing Cars came to my rescue.

They sang…

I need your grace, To remind me, To find my own.

And then it clicked, and into all this madness I heard God speak, he said:

If I lay here, If I just lay here,  Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Then suddenly, the reality of Christmas came home again.

Finally, we were together.