Tasteless!

Sunday 22 December 2024, Christmas Carols by Candlelight 5.00pm

“Tasteless!” by The Very Reverend Nicholas Papadopulos, Dean of Salisbury

 

 

My favourite Christmas film is Richard Curtis’s 2003 schmalz-fest Love Actually.  Unashamed romantic that I am, my favourite scene is the one in which Andrew Lincoln arrives at the newly married Keira Knightley’s door.  Carols sound from his portable CD player (that dates it) and he holds up a succession of cue cards declaring his love for her.  One of these reads ‘At Christmas you tell the truth’.

 

It’s an admirable sentiment – but I’m not sure that we do.  Do we tell the truth about our aversion to charades, about the cheap aftershave we unwrap, about the programmes we’re missing because of others’ insistence on watching Gavin and Stacey?  Do we?

 

This evening let me offer you an opportunity to redeem all those Christmas porkies – even if they’re vegan porkies wrapped in seasonal blankets of good intentions.  Let me ask you this – and please put up your hands to answer – do you own or have you ever worn a Christmas jumper?

 

I date the emergence of Christmas jumpers as an essential element of our winter wardrobes to another early-noughties schmalz-fest – 2001’s Bridget Jones’s Diary – and to another memorable scene.  It’s Christmas, and the annual Turkey Curry Buffet in the Jones household is attended by the handsome human rights lawyer Mark Darcey.  Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is proudly emblazoned on the hand-knitted jumper lovingly made for him by his mother.  And Bridget is smitten.

 

If I’m right and if that was the moment that Christmas jumpers went mainstream, then their momentum has been unstoppable.  They are everywhere.  They have landscapes of antlers, snowflakes, and fir trees.  They feature puddings, stars, penguins, snowmen and even dinosaurs.  They have jingling bells and flashing lights.  They sparkle and flash.  They come in the most lurid colours and flammable fabrics imaginable.

 

And we love them.  But what on earth does an item of knitwear bearing the legend ‘Believe In Your Elf’ and decorated with unicorns, sleigh rides, and shiny baubles have to do what the unsmiling self-appointed guardians of the moral order still call ‘The Real Meaning of Christmas’?  Let me tell you.  It has everything.

 

A parish church near to where I used to work in London sells tickets to its annual Carol Service: the tickets guarantee the worshipper champagne, and canapes by Yotam Ottolenghi.  This is Christian faith as the acme of good taste, what Alan Bennett might call Christian faith with the crusts cut off.  You can bet your life there won’t be a Christmas jumper in view amidst the cashmere, Burberry and tweed.  Because Christmas jumpers are tasteless.

 

And here’s the thing – so is God.  God is tasteless.  Utterly tasteless.  God is without a shred of aesthetic, cultural or intellectual judgement.  For God has loved all of us into being and God’s love for each of us is eternal and unchanging.  And when I say ‘us’ I don’t mean ‘us’, cocooned in the tasteful glow of England’s loveliest Cathedral and serenaded by the tasteful music of England’s finest Choir.  I mean all of ‘us’ – I mean humanity.  There is not a single human being living or departed who is not the object of God’s constant attention and undying regard.  God would not love us better if we were thinner or fitter, if we had whiter teeth or glossier hair, if we had better jobs or more money, if we were younger or older or cleverer.  God doesn’t care whether we like Thomas Tallis or Taylor Swift, football or fine art, lager, lemonade, or Lafite.

 

In fact I think that’s one of the reasons that the cultured despisers of religion…despise religion.  They can’t cope with the reality that in God’s eyes they are not special or different.  Well – they are- but then to God we all are; we all are special and different.

 

According to St Matthew the angel tells Joseph that Mary’s child will be called Emmanuel: God-with-us.  With all of us.  For ever.  God has no taste.  So: wear your Christmas jumpers with pride.  And if you haven’t got one, put it on your list for next year.  The tinsel and the lights, the bells and the sequins, the snowmen, the reindeer, and the dinosaurs – they are bearing witness to a God in whom there is no discrimination and no exclusion.  It’s the best news there has ever been.  God is with us. With all of us.  Thank God.