In her Christmas Day column for the Stray Ferret, the Bishop of Ripon, the Rt Rev Dr Helen-Ann Hartley, reflects on all the things we’re missing this year – but that we can still have all we need, and fill that need for others too.
I am sure there wasn’t a dry eye in the house when Oti Mabuse and Bill Bailey were crowned the winners of this year’s Strictly Come Dancing competition.
I have dipped in and out of this year’s series. I watched all of Bake Off and I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here (which secured me a point in this year’s Ripon Runners’ Zoom Christmas Quiz: I knew that Jordan North was the runner up!), but Strictly has not really been on my viewing radar, and I’m going to have to catch up on that one.
But the sight of Oti and Bill rejoicing at their win and so much wanting to run around and hug the other contestants but not being able to do so was a poignant moment of joy and grief all in one.
Ripon Cathedral was reopened by the clergy in June, after the first lockdown was eased
I still haven’t been able to hug my parents. My dad completed his cancer treatment just before lockdown, but then both had to shield. They are in a tier 3 area, and so Christmas won’t be the same; we aren’t risking the opportunity to meet up indoors.
Out of lockdown and tiers, catch-ups have been in our garden. We celebrated their golden wedding anniversary back in October on a mercifully mild and sunny autumn day, a Bettys celebration iced fruit cake the delicious centre-piece of the distanced picnic-table spread.
‘Lives pulled apart’
Covid has impacted all of our lives, and while I have been uplifted at the stories of community care and resilience, it has been hard to hear about the pain of lives pulled apart, and of loneliness, isolation and struggles. This year Christmas isn’t the same, and we aren’t able to gather with friends and family.
I will miss the Boxing Day pilgrimage to Fountains Abbey, and blessing the City of Ripon at midnight from the Town Hall balcony with raucous crowds assembled below on the Market Square, and fireworks offering a rousing welcome to the new year. No, it’s just not the same at all.
Yet what is the same is the Christmas story. I shared a reflection on this at a recent Auction Mart drive-in carol service. Using a Christmas cracker, I spoke about how a cracker contains surprises: a joke or riddle, a paper crown, and a gift. The baby who was born over 2000 years ago was something of a surprise; he was the answer to the musings of prophets; he was a king unlike any other; and in his life all of humanity received a gift: God becoming one of us, experiencing our joys and sorrows and going ahead of us into the unknown.
Now, to some, that’s just daft, but this is a narrative of hope that has endured, and it’s a narrative that grounds everything that I try to do, say and be.
And you can see it at work all around us too: in the kindness of strangers, in the magnificent NHS, and in the process of the rapid development of the vaccine. Maybe you can think of your own example too?
I’m struck by lots of images of Jesus’ birth, how the child radiates light illuminating the faces gazing upon him. All the light we need is that which can help us take the next step. We don’t need a floodlight.
Glimpses of hope, love, light and joy are everywhere, and if we don’t see it, perhaps we can be that light that someone needs today. Just enough to help us get to the next day, and the day after that. That’s what the Christmas story is about: not ‘me’ but ‘us’: God with us.
Happy Christmas!
