Sermon

28th December 2025

The Christmas story is all happiness and joy.  Despite the awful journey down from Nazareth, despite there being no room in the inn, despite the inevitable squalor of a real stable … despite all those things, the baby has been safely delivered, he has been carolled by choirs of angels, visited by local shepherds, and received valuable gifts from those esoteric figures from far away.

But all that happiness and joy is short lived.  As we heard in today’s gospel, King Herod has set his sights on having the child murdered.  Mary and Joseph must set off on another long journey, now with their baby son.  They flee to Egypt.  The gospels don’t tell us about how long they were there and what they saw in that time away from Palestine.  However, there are many Coptic Christian churches in Egypt that claim to be have been built on the site of one of the places where they stayed.  Indeed, many of them display a map showing the supposed route of the Holy Family’s itinerary, although we will never know for certain whether or not they saw, for example, the great pyramids at Giza, or those magnificent temples at Luxor.

But the Holy Family were not in Egypt for sightseeing or for fun.  Again, it is doubtful that they would have had the money for a donkey or good accommodation, once the wise men’s gold had been spent.  Joseph probably took what work he could get to support them until it was safe for them to return to Nazareth, another very long and difficult journey.

Christmas is not all happiness and fun.  And as then, so now for so many.  I always think of those in prison away from their families at Christmas.  I know that whatever we did to try and make the day tolerable, the women were desperately lonely and sad that day, many of them in particular missing their children.  We think too of the homeless, of the lonely, of those whose experience of Christmases past bring back terrible memories.

For me, this is all summed up in the greatest of all the Christmas singles which is, of course, Fairytale in New York by the Pogues with Kirsty McColl.  It is a dialogue between a man and woman expressing those extremes of mood on Christmas Day.  It starts so well as they express their love for each other.  But then addictions and arguments set in.  Finally, there is an expression of dependence on each other, even though that first spark has long gone.

As we listen to it, do think about those for whom this Christmas has been awful: for relationships that have broken down; for those recalling terrible experiences, perhaps from childhood; for the lonely; for prisoners; for the dying and the bereaved.  And pray that they may find faith in Jesus, who comes to them and us again this Christmas, offering peace and hope and consolation.

Amen