Christmas Ends Loneliness - GBC Bulletin Column #35

For many people in 21^st Century England, Christmas is indeed, as the song calls it, “the most wonderful time of the year.” Filled with family fun, fine food, and festive friendliness, Christmas provides an opportunity in the oppressive darkness of winter to be happy, to enjoy life, and to express love to the dearest of family and friends. For others, however, the Christmas season breeds only despair, exacerbating the loneliness of people who will not enjoy close family and have no one with whom to be friendly. Some might sit alone and eat a ready-made replication of Christmas dinner they bought at the frozen food store, followed perhaps by a cheap Christmas pudding and hours in front of the television. Perhaps there are others who could only dream of such 'comfortable splendour'. Still more who might be considered materially well-off are filled with misery: another feud within the family, ungrateful children, a narcissistic spouse, the stress that the inevitable return to the work place will bring…

According to the charity Age Concern, approximately 450,000 people over the age of 65 in the UK will be spending this Christmas alone. Over 5 million elderly British residents rely on TV to keep them company. And these figures apply only to those who are getting on in years. Loneliness is multi-generational: one in ten patients across all ages will visit their GP not because they are unwell, but because they are lonely. Unsurprisingly, London is the most lonely part of England. Our corner of London is no exception - at Christmas 2003, a 38 year-old woman named Joyce Vincent died in her flat on the Sky City housing estate, metres away from Grace Baptist Church. She wasn't the only person to die that Christmas, but her death received the most media attention... three years later when her decomposed body was finally discovered by housing officials.

Christmas ends loneliness. ‘Christmas ends loneliness?’ you ask. ‘It sounds more like Christmas creates loneliness!’ You read me correctly me the first time. Christmas, truly understood, ends loneliness. As the celebratory festival of the sending of Christ into the world, Christmas tells us about 'Immanuel - God with us', and how our loneliness can be replaced with the personal knowledge and experience of the love of God in Jesus Christ by turning from our sins and the idols of our life to faith in Christ alone for salvation. What’s more it provides us with many opportunities to share that love with others. It calls us to come to the end of ourselves, and join the wise men of old in falling on our faces to worship Christ with our being and our belongings (Matthew 2:11), to as we sometimes sing, ‘forget about ourselves and concentrate on him and worship him.’ As long as celebration is the substance of Christmas, loneliness will persist, but when Christmas becomes the substance of celebration then we have some experience of what it means for God to be with us, to know and love him, to be counted as members of his family, to be freed from the dark shroud of loneliness that afflicts lost humanity, and to help free others. 

This was printed in the worship bulletin of Grace Baptist Church (Wood Green) on 22 December 2013