The Psychology of Christmas

As a Christian I have to ask myself, particularly at this time of year, why I believe. On the face of it, it is absurd to think that a virgin was told by an angel that she was pregnant by the Holy Spirit of God and would give birth to a Son who would be the saviour of the world. So why do I believe that in the depths of my soul ? It's not an easy question to answer, the hardest questions never are.

This painting by Fra Angelico may give a clue, it is the Angel Gabriel telling Mary the good news that God has chosen her to bear His Son. Mary accepts the will of God just as Adam and Eve had rejected it. For me, there is the sublime mystery of the action of the unknowable here upon this earth. The ineffable beauty of Mary's response to Gabriel: " Behold! the handmaiden of the Lord". The Magnificat her inspired words on the purpose of her coming Son's life, he who will exalt the poor above the rich and invert the values of this World. If human beings have no hope then we are spiritually dead.

So, it is a coming together of divine love and humanity, of a love so great it is beyond our knowing and the fragility of humanity. In a time which has known greater wickedness than ever before, when even Herod's slaughter of the first born would struggle to get a newspaper headline, is it not a miracle that, if we choose, we can believe that the humble babe of Bethlehem was born to give us Hope. A hope that true reality may not be the Holocaust, genocide in Rwanda ,or Bosnia, but the possibility of redemption , in thw words of the prophet Isaiah:

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end.Isaiah, 9. 6