We are sometimes asked the innocent question, “Doing anything special this Christmas?” And sometimes there is an immediate and obvious answer.

A group of people waiting for the first Irish screening of “The Return of the King” last week were asked by a radio reporter whether seeing the new film would take precedence over Christmas in the excitement stakes for them this year. Quite a number seemed to think it would, and one of these made the more thoughtful comment that, after all, there would be another Christmas next year! Quite so - well, presumably so.

But far from making me wish to go into Grinch mode, and to seethe publicly about the superficiality of a present-day culture which could seriously place the premiere of a film ahead of the celebration of the birth of Christ, I have found myself thinking rather more on the question of precisely why Christmas 2003 should indeed be special - why should this Christmas not just be just another Christmas, in a long line of Christmases? Why should Christmas 2003 be different for Christian believers than Christmas 2002, or even the prospect of Christmas 2004, when there will be no film premiere of “The Return of the King” to divert our attention?

For some people, in the changes and chances of their individual lives, Christmas this year will indeed be something different and unique:

• the bereavement which means a first Christmas alone.
• a birth in the family with all the excitement of having a baby in the house at Christmas.
• the first Christmas together as a married couple.
• a Christmas in hospital.
• Christmas in a new war-zone.
• Christmas living rough on the streets for the first time.
• the lonely Christmas as an outsider in a new country. in a foreign country.
• the fear-filled Christmas facing the terminal illness which almost certainly means that there will not be another Christmas to take for granted?

Yes in all those settings, Christmas 2003 will indeed have a special feeling about it, making it – for better or worse - unlike any other Christmas. God willing, it may bring hope, reassurance, a new conviction that the God of all love is not absent from any human situation; that God is indeed part of it all, the joy or pain, the hope or despair, in the person of the Christ who came among us, as fully one of us and one with us, through eternity.

But for those of us who cannot categorise ourselves in this way - what are we to find “special” about this Christmas?

If we think back over these past months, one of the aspects of our culture which appears more and more central to life itself is surely the passion for what is called “accountability”? Someone, somewhere, is to be held accountable, it would seem, for anything and everything that goes wrong anywhere. From international fascination as to how Saddam Hussein will be called to account, to the vast media coverage of the trial of the Ian Huntley, from tribunals to investigate corruption in Irish public life to the removal of managers of sports teams that are not performing well. All around us is the demand for accountability - in public life, in the Church, in business, in sport, even in personal relationships : “Who is responsible?” / “Whom can we blame?”, are the questions to which we all demand answers. Some of this enthusiasm for accountability is of course a true thirst for justice. But let us be honest, some is shameful and pharisaic scapegoating - if someone else is being held up to public ridicule or contempt as “being to blame”, we can feel so much better about ourselves.

So what of Christmas 2003? Well, the deepest theological meaning of the Incarnation is the message that God is holding himself accountable for this world, in the person of Jesus Christ. He takes to himself the guilts, mistakes, fears, frustrations that are part of the human craving for “getting even”, as well as the misery, the depression and the hopelessness that arise as part of the experience of being held accountable, whether justly or unjustly. It does not mean that the thirst for justice on earth disappears, but it does take on a new meaning and a new context.

All of us should believe ourselves responsible and accountable for so much around us that goes wrong. The person who believes that everything is always someone else’s fault is actually diseased, mentally and spiritually. The instinct to blame others all the time is a symptom of a deep sickness of mind and soul. The application of Christmas 2003 to a world which encourages us to think and act in this way is that there is a bigger picture - a deeply spiritual context - to the idea of accountability: the accountability of God.

The meaning of the Incarnation and of the Cross is precisely that truth. That is why the crib and the cross should never be separated, and that is why, of course, this Christmas service is the Eucharist - the Holy Communion – and is not just the singing of nice carols around a Christmas tree. We receive Christ with faith and joy now, at Christmas 2003, because right here is another vital if troubling perspective on what it really means to be accountable. Of course justice must be done on earth and must be seen to be done, but we are all accountable, every day of our lives, for our destructiveness, our self-centredness, and our obsessiveness with trivia at the expense of righteousness. And so, as we make others accountable, we are called to accept our own vulnerable accountability. Christ makes himself accountable for us, but only if we can accept our own accountability and can accept his offer to make us, with him, the children of God rather than the prisoners or the playthings of God. As the opening of John’s Gospel puts it so straightforwardly, “To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.” It is in only in that context that we can hold others accountable, when we understand that accountability and redemption are for all.

My personal favourite of the Christmas collects is one which is not always prayed at Christmas, because it was not a principal collect in the old Book of Common Prayer. It is now a Collect for Christmas Eve rather than Christmas Day. In its traditional form it reads,

O God, who makest us glad with the yearly remembrance of the birth of thy only Son Jesus Christ; Grant that as we joyfully receive him for our redeemer, so we may with sure confidence behold him when he shall come to be our Judge, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end.

Christmas 2003 does point us to the return of a king, another king than Aragorn. The King of glory and of justice whom we must face one day is the child of Bethlehem whom we worship with joy in this Eucharist. That old Christmas collect places us all between joy and judgement, between enchantment and accountability. It reminds us that not only can we live without fear, but that we can even live with love, with confidence and as good citizens on earth, if we will hold together our joy at redemption with the certainty of the accountability of all to God, an accountability which is at once infinitely more searching but also infinitely more loving than that of any investigative reporter, tribunal chairman, or high court Judge.

No, Christmas 2003 is not the same as any other Christmas.

We’re looking at a different world, and we’re looking differently at that world.

We are doing something special this Christmas.