So why is it that the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph, amongst other papers, have seized on the fact that cathedrals will be full this Christmas?
Where I work (St Paul’s Cathedral) we have been full to bursting for the Advent Carol Service and all our Christmas concerts and services so far. We have organised an extra carol service on Christmas Eve because we don’t want to turn people away (as we did to 800 last year). The debate now rages as to why. The National Secular Society reminds us that many people enjoy singing Christmas carols without signing up to the meaning of the words, while the Theos survey found that most people still cite being with family and friends as the most important aspect of Christmas.
Statistics claiming that over 50% of school children don’t know that Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus Christ are set against the census box ticking of 70% of adults who say they are Christian. The fact is, at St Paul’s, we are overwhelmed with people of all ages and nationalities in a building that seats 2,500 for every service. Is it a mixture of nostalgia and a nagging sense of duty that gets the people through the doors? Not to mention good old competition? Some analysis has argued that in a world which seems to be as furiously religious as ever, the return to church at Christmas is the function of a religious market. Nominal Christians are feeling the need to state their religious identity in opposition to an increasingly confident Islam perhaps. Or maybe it’s not so much religion as culture. It’s an assertion of what it is to be British, or perhaps more accurately English. Sure, the Victorian Christmas that we have been bequeathed, complete with Christina Rosetti’s carols and Prince Albert’s fir trees is deep in the UK’s cultural memory but it is the nostalgia part of the package.
It’s a shallow reading of the situation if we attribute this return to church only as an affirmation of a certain kind of Englishness, not to mention the fact that this reading contributes to the atomising of our society rather than its flourishing.
I think it’s deeper than that. Sociologists researching the relationship between ritual and belief find that in a post Enlightenment post Freudian West, we expect proof of personal faith before attending church services in a way that generates more heat than light. By contrast, we can read the return to church alongside other cultural movements that are more instinctive and that express deep truths about what it means to be human. It’s deeper than religious or cultural identity.
For example, it’s increasingly an act of resistance in a virtual world to get up out of your sofa and go to church. Just take the example of music. Leona Lewis’ new X factor single sold 20,000 downloaded copies in 5 minutes. With iPods, we have created a phenomenon that has never before been seen in human music making – the solitary listener. In previous centuries, one had to be rich or royal to command a minstrel to play just for you. Now, anyone can listen to the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at our command, as we lie naked in the bath. In this cultural environment, Christmas carol services are extraordinary. The music is live, we are not in control of the content or volume, we will be distracted by or inspired by those singing and playing, and we listen with others. We will be asked to sing too. Live sport and live music are flourishing even in a world of virtual culture and while we are as a society losing trust in our institutions, we are still prepared to have faith in each other. We find that while we weren’t looking, the church was still there, doing what it has always done – gathering people together to express common purpose and calling them beyond themselves. It’s real not virtual.
Perhaps a second instinctive reaction to church is to its imagery, borrowed from pre- Christian rites. Of course it’s true that midwinter pagan festivals were probably appropriated by Christian emperors (was it in the 4th century or possibly in 274 by a Roman emperor who wanted to challenge the pagan festival of the “birthday of the invincible sun”? Scholars are divided). Christmas is always going to be a hybrid religious and cultural festival celebrated on the boundary between sacred and secular, Christian and pagan, high art and low art. Public liturgy will inevitably be a cross between worship and pantomime. But the pre-Christian imagery and symbol is resonant with a post-modern sensibility and even in an electric age awakens our visceral desire to search for light in the darkness of midwinter. These islands were, from the beginning of human civilisation, multi-cultural, based on the Angle and Saxon mix of culture and blood. And our common desire for light in the darkness is one that finds expression in the imagery of Christmas. It simply reminds of the fact that Christianity makes sense of the world. Faith in life after death, a belief in the coming light even in the darkness: imagery that helps to explain the human story of Jesus.
I don’t think as a society we should try to claim hearts and minds for one side or the other, and certainly not as an exhibition of patriotism. As Archbishop Temple said, the Church is the one institution that exists for the people who don’t belong to it. If people want to come, even as an exercise in cultural curiosity, let them come. They will find at Christmas a community and a story pregnant with meaning and hope.
Revd Canon Lucy Winkett is Canon Precentor at St Paul’s Cathedral and a founding member of the Theos advisory group.
