In the run up to Christmas, our mailbox and phone are inundated by charities trying to get their own piece of the ‘good-will action’ so to speak. This means difficult decisions. Are our gifts to be to children or animals, health or refugees? The list is long as in the UK alone there are 163,361 charities. Some have billions of income, others just a few pounds.
I struggle to decide which to support and over the years have thought deeply about what influences my eventual choices. Although others may choose differently, I first go through the ones that try to manipulate my emotions. TV Ads that use techniques of theatre and music to try to make me feel guilty are off my list. This is not because I have a hard heart; it is because I have a strong sense of gratitude for my blessings rather than a weak sense of guilt about the misfortune of others. Therefore, charities that try to make me feel guilty lose out to those who make me feel positive about my blessings.
Animal charities are also out, this is because our own animals seem to like our company so much, that I can’t see the need for ‘Animal Rights’ the campaigning bodies shout about.
Finally, most foreign aid is now off my list. After a life-time travelling and carefully watching the world, I have concluded that “Trade not Aid” is the best way to help the starving of the world. For example, changes to European Agricultural Policies could open flood-gates to product from many African nations who would love to ‘earn’ their own income.
Big charities, like all big organisations, spend millions telling us that only they have answers. But in a world which has become obsessed with big answers and big systems, Christmas is the time when focus shifts back to a little crib and a little baby. Maybe the truth is that there are lots of little answers rather than one big one, after-all; I don’t recall the bible teaching that the Christmas baby was born to set up a big system to provide a big answer!
That baby had lots of personal troubles during an eventful life, but he did achieve inner peace, an answer which he described as ‘Oneness with the Father”. Could it be that a baby, not a system has shown us how to discover our own inner peace by finding our own ‘Oneness” within?
At this point, I have just realised I am starting to sound like my Great Grandfather and so I’ll shut up. In any case I don’t want readers to think I am impinging on clerical territory.
However like most readers, charity is never far from our minds especially during Advent, but if can you avoid those charities who try to make you feel guilty and instead give out of a sense of gratitude, you will be doubly blessed.
The Shropshire poet A. E. Houseman when only twenty years of age experienced a sense of gratitude so strong that he wrote about the sheer joy of seeing cherry blossom in Springtime. Even-so, his elation was tinged with sadness as he realised that during a lifetime of “Three Score years and Ten,” there were to be only fifty more times in which to see the, “Cherry, bloom in Spring”.
All my life I have sung Christmas Carols and I just love to sing them. Like A.E. Houseman, I have always been conscious that there is a limit to every enjoyment, and this helps me to savour each line of text, and each cadence of sound as it pulses under the stone arches and over the ancient oak beams of the church that was built as a reminder that, time is not just ‘the now’ but has an eternal quality.
Christmas is the hope that there is more to life than the soulless atomic clock measuring the inevitable decay of matter. Christmas does not mourn decay but celebrates creation.
The Christmas morning hymn is always Adeste Fidelis;
‘Yea Lord we greet thee born this happy morning’
View from the Pew 