Sir, – While Conor Pope ("Why we celebrate Christmas on the 25th, eat mince pies and put up trees", Pricewatch, December 14th) is correct to identify Christmas holly with the blood shed at Calvary and the crown of thorns, he misses the mark by suggesting that only a "a hardcore Christian from 1,900 years ago with a strong commitment to the end" would see it as a fitting Christmas decoration.
Whether one is a believing Christian or a non-believer with a desire to understand what Christians believe, even a cursory glance at the gospels show that sacrifice and suffering are part and parcel of the Nativity.
The joy of Christmas is not simply about the happy story of a baby’s birth, but is a response to God’s light and presence breaking into the most unpromising of circumstances.
The Christ-Child is born excluded from the usual comforts of home, in a land occupied by a foreign power, and into a family that has been displaced by an inhumane bureaucracy. He is welcomed by poor shepherds living at the very margins of respectable society, and his family will end up being driven into Egypt by persecution.
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One of the gifts of the Magi is myrrh, a precious substance used in the embalming of corpses. From the very beginning, the story of that child points towards the reality of the cross.
That doesn’t diminish our celebration, but reminds us that the birth of Jesus is good news precisely because he enters a hostile world to transform the very nature of human suffering and despair from within.
If that were not so, then why would we still commemorate his birth 20 centuries later? By capturing this dimension of the Christmas celebration, the holly deserves its privileged place among our decorations. – Yours, etc,
Rev BERNARD HEALY,
Rome.