From The Editor

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CHRISTMAS has always been my favourite time of the Church year.

I have distinctive memories of learning to sing Away In A Manger as a P1 at school ahead of the school’s Christmas service at one of the local churches.

My enthusiasm for the season may also have something to do with my birthday falling in the month of Christmas!

One of the most moving ‘working’ Christmas Days of my life was when I was working for a daily newspaper. It was spent, not with family or in church, but witnessing a group of jolly monks cooking a threecourse Christmas dinner (with all the trimmings) for a group of homeless people – mainly men – in central Edinburgh.

Whilst their eforts were providing welcome nourishment and festive cheer, the monks were also providing company for a group of essentially lonely people, who were among the hidden homeless – not the archetypal rough sleepers sadly still present on the streets today.

Homeless people are not the only ones to experience loneliness at this time of year. For some, Christmas is a time of challenge – and not a time of jolly camaraderie but a time of silent unspoken thoughts and sometimes sadness.

Yet one of the key themes surrounding the story of the birth of the Son of God is loneliness. Mary, heavily pregnant and due to give birth at any moment, Joseph and their donkey cannot ind room anywhere. They are friendless, rejected and alone, until an innkeeper takes pity on the exhausted family-to-be and ofers the most humble and basic accommodation at his disposal – little more than a barn.

For some, Christmas is a time of challenge – and not a time of jolly camaraderie but a time of silent unspoken thoughts and sometimes sadness.

That gesture ended their isolation and loneliness in a strange town, giving them the simplest of places to rest and rejoice in the miracle of birth.

In recent years some churches have provided special ‘blue Christmas’ or memorial services for those whose sentiments may be at odds with the enforced joviality of the season or for those who have lost loved ones during the year. At the heart of these services is loneliness – a sense that they are isolated amid the perceived joy of the season. The elderly are particularly lonely and with a dramatic increase in single person households and singleness, the issue of social loneliness is likely to grow.

For some, the sanctuary of these services may be the only social contact they have with others over the season. It is often the elderly and the single who feel loneliness most keenly at this time of year.

Yet a simple gesture – a quiet word, an act of kindness or even a reluctant ofer of shelter – can make a world of diference.

Lynne McNeil

Editor

The Life and Work team wishes all readers a peaceful Christmas and a blessed new year.

This article appears in the December 2018 Issue of Life and Work

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