What are we to do with Christmas in a post-modern, consciously pluralist culture which is explicitly detaching it from its religious content? I raise this less as the whinge of a clerical grinch than as a statement of cold reality. An unbiased listen or look at the radio, television and newspaper makes the whole matter extremely clear.

• In the U.K the Red Cross has openly banned the use of the religious imagery of Christmas in its windows on the grounds of possible offence to non-believers. Santas and Christmas trees are permissible, but not cribs, angels or even shepherds.
• The politically correct greeting for now, imported from the other side of the Atlantic but being seized on quickly enough here in Ireland, is not “Happy Christmas” but “Happy Holiday”.
• Japan, a non-Christian culture, is increasingly celebrating Christmas but without reference to Christ, rather Christmas is a season for new romance – a kind of extended Valentine’s Day.
• But, perhaps most disturbing of all, the Samaritan organisation in Sheffield has caused something of a stir by displaying a poster with the words, “I’m sorry that Jesus was ever born” – shocking, but reminding us of the intense loneliness and despair that Christmas may bring to the non-happy and the non-merry who are not having fun, or pretending to have fun. There is an increase of nearly 20% in calls to the Samaritans in the days between Christmas and New Year.

So, what are we to do with Christmas? Are we to shout louder that this is not what Christmas is meant to be, and that if people will not give it its deeply religious significance, they should leave Christmas alone; they should find something else to do for these days each year, provided that they don’t call it Christmas, and therefore do not play unbelieved carols in shops, and place insincere cribs in public places? It would be very easy to work at moving Christmas if not into the ghetto then into a grotto - a small, artificial but usually picturesque cave. We would be in effect saying, “We Christians will do Christmas as it should be done, but the rest of you are not allowed to deform it.” Possibly, but can we not do better than that? Privatising Christmas is scarcely a Gospel enterprise.

The message of Christmas, the message of the Incarnation, is surely one which we should seek to thrust into the communities in which we live. It is not a story which is our little secret, for those who already belong to our club. The incarnation of Jesus Christ has things to say to our society, things which society may not only need to hear but may well want to hear, despite itself.

What Christmas is saying - even in its colourful story line in the Gospel of Luke - is that society has a reference point outside itself. Society, the relationship of people to people, is not to be gauged in terms of how useful another person is to us. Losing any sense of that which is beyond us - the transcendent, God - means that human behaviour will usually be understood in terms only of crude function: Is that person of any use to me, my well-being, my prosperity, or my pleasure? If not, they are of no real use. People, even those closest to us, become assets or functions rather than people. What the Christian Gospel is saying, over and over again, is that we do have a point of reference beyond human usefulness, or human uselessness. To see or to understand anything or anyone properly is to be aware that everything and everyone relates before all else to the eternal, to God.

But Christmas in particular goes further and deeper. We will understand and grasp this point of reference, this reason for being, only if we can find God also within humanity. The Christmas story is that Christ, God Incarnate, is found not only within humanity, but in the most unexpected sector of humankind. He is found in squalor and in disadvantage. Nothing we try to do or say will square the circle to make Christianity inherently designer fashionable. From that perspective, perhaps the humiliation which the Church in this country is now suffering may remind us of that truth, even if the disrepute is due less to our faithfulness, than to our betrayal of Gospel precepts. Christ was not born, in the words of the old Cherry Tree Carol, not in housen nor in hall, nor - and this should shock us even more - in the place of Paradise, but in an ox’s stall. The compass point for finding what society is actually for, is to be found paradoxically in those for whom society has little time. Ironically the point of reference for society should be those who may well wish - because of the way in which they have been neglected and marginalised - that Christmas didn’t happen, that Jesus had never been born.

Perhaps like me, you’ve often wondered why Matthew begins his Gospel with long genealogical lists of human ancestors of Jesus (particularly when he’s working back from Joseph and not from Mary). It may certainly be explained, at least in part, by Matthew’s wish to show the place of Jesus Christ within the mainstream tradition of the Hebrew story. However, there is another indirect effect. We see that Jesus had slightly dubious forebears as well. King David was no shining example of moral wholesomeness, nor indeed was Jacob. While Judah may not have been quite as callous towards Joseph as were his brothers, he was not exactly a model big brother. Rehoboam was scarcely an example of wise and humane statesmanship.

It should still dumbfound us to think of God - the God of perfection, of beauty and of unqualified love - as within humanity, and not in the most respectable and successful examples of humanity either. God in Christ is found in those who are left outside the world of success, prestige and social power. What is more, if the Christmas story has got it right, he is most to be found in those who have been left outside that world of power and material means. If that does not affect how we envision society, how we live as citizens, and what we demand of those to whom we entrust the leadership of our country, nothing will. And therefore if Christmas does not still disturb us to the core, then perhaps we should indeed remove religious images from our celebration of Christmas. The crib, the shepherds, the angels, and the Wise Men may make a pretty tableau, but if they have lost their power to perplex and unsettle us, then we might indeed be better off without them. The grotto is already well enough stocked with Santa, the mistletoe and the Christmas tree.

But if we are still disturbed by the point of Christmas, the message of the Incarnation, then we have indeed something of profound and eternal value to bring to the Christmas which seeks to do without Christ.

So now let us act upon it outside the walls of this Cathedral.