Batman at the Crib

The Revd Robert Mackley, an Assistant Chaplain at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. (C hurch Times Diary)

WITH the Christmas octave just past, I am led to reflect on what the season means for people. It is the time of year when even the least mission-shaped parish engages in a bit of outreach, and when a modest amount of pastoral diligence and advertising reaps good rewards.

Carol services, crib services, Christingles, and nativities all get wheeled out to sate the desire of a demanding public. Oh, how as a child I hated the Chris tingle service, in variably im paling myself on the cock tail sticks poking out of the orange, and always, for some un fathomable reason, dropping the fruit on the floor during “Away in a manger” when the lights were turned down.

Not all nativities are faithful to the efforts of Matthew and Luke: I remember that one year, during my first curacy, we asked the children to come as characters from the Gospel infancy scenes, and one child came dressed as Batman — something that demonstrated, I argued to myself at the time, that even pagan stories find their completion in the events of Bethlehem.

Friends who work in cathedrals tell me that in recent years they have had to put on increasing quantities of all these events to deal with the vast numbers attending, and certainly, in Liverpool, our “Carols by Candle light” was standing room only by the third year of its instigation.

You cannot help but wonder, however, what effect all these acts of worship have on people, and why they never seem to come the rest of the year, certainly not in such numbers at Easter. Perhaps birth is more appealing than death and resurrec tion; perhaps in the darkness of winter the feel-good factor of a wondrous birth is a powerful draw; or could it be that people need some psychological reassurance that life has meaning, to allow them to return un encumbered to the tasks of con­spicuous consumption and the worship of celebrity during the other 11 months of the year?