Good News for All People
The Rev’d Devin McLachlan
Christmas Day 2025
St Bene’t’s, Cambridge
Luke 2.1-14
On 8 June, 1647, the English Parliament passed “An Ordinance for Abolishing of Festivals”
Re-iterating legislation passed during the Civil War, the act stated “That the said Feast of the Nativity of Christ, Easter and Whitsuntide and all other Festival days, commonly called Holy-dayes, be no longer observed … within this Kingdom of England …”
That winter in London the military patrolled the streets, presumably seizing figgy puddings and sprigs of holly.
Town criers walked the streets calling: “No Christmas, No Christmas”.
The Puritan ban remained in place for 13 years. It was a crackdown on revelry and boozy festivities, and a call to fasting and solemn prayer, but it was also a theological statement: Holy Scripture records no Christmas carols,
And indeed Jews of 1st Century Palestine did not celebrate birthdays, although Roman pagans did.
(By which we should not then conclude that therefore Jesus didn’t exist. The particular, often British atheist, argument of the non-existence of Jesus carries a deeply classist assumption — erasing from history the millions of peasants and other poor people whose names were not recorded by the Roman state.)
Equally concerning to Biblical literalists — of the 17th century and today — is that Holy Writ does not say on which day Jesus was born.
It’s not simply that this would have made it hard for Jesus to get a Drivers License.
[Jesus drove a Honda but didn't talk about it: John 12:49 “For I did not speak of my own Accord.” ]
In fact, if Luke’s Gospel is anything to go by, shepherds did not livi in the fields keeping watch over their flocks at night in midwinter.
In December, sheep were kept well away from tender rain-soaked fields. Sheep in the winter were either grazed in the wilderness, or kept in sheltered places. Midsummer was the more likely time to find shepherds living the fields.
Which is why Happy Birthday is not a Christmas Carol. Today we celebrate far more than a birthday.
Today is the Feast of the Nativity — the Christ Mass: the great Christian festival of the mystery of Christ’s Birth, the Word become flesh to dwell among us.
Today is the day we remember God from God, Light from Light, Very God from Very God, whom heaven could not hold but a stable place sufficed:
Born in poverty, a manger for his bed, worshiped by poor shepherds.
Born as one of us, he and his family soon to be driven from their home by the powers and principalities of their land, to live for years as refugees.
Today is the day we rejoice in The Word made flesh who showed us God’s Kingdom, who came to live as one of us, to teach and to heal and break bread, to suffer death upon the cross, and to rise in glory.
Today is the day we hear the angels in bright brass voices, singing good news of great joy for all people. All people.
Neither Jew nor Greek, Slave nor Free, Male nor Female – neither wealth, nor citizenship, nor physical ability, no one race, sexuality, nor denomination, – can lay exclusive claim to this good news of great joy.
Today is the day we remember that Christ came for all of us, to bring us all Good News.
Which means, incredibly, this Feast of the Nativity means today is not only about Jesus. Today is your Festival. For to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.
To you is born this happy morning, God of God and Light of Light.
You do not need to earn this gift, this present Present of Christ’s nativity. You can be as wise as the magi, you can be poor as the shepherds, as dour as the Puritans or as merry as can be.
All you need bring is your Heart. All you need do is to come to Bethlehem this day, faithful, joyful, triumphant; wondering, grieving, broken.
For this day is your joyful Christmas, the Word of God born in your heart, where it shines as a bright star in the darkness.
Let no one cry again “No Christmas”, for this is your Feast of the Nativity: so come and behold him born the King of angels.
O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord!