Innocents

There’s a scene in one of my favourite Christmas films, ‘Nativity’ where one of the characters is looking to put on a Nativity play that will be better than anything ever seen before. At one point he says:-

‘Herod? No one’s ever done him before’

Accordingly, be bases it on the ‘massacre of the innocents’* At first there is shock, and then to keep with the arc of the story, there is success and rapturous applause.

Many years ago when I was minister of a church, a gathered service involving local churches fell on this day, ‘Holy Innocents Day’. It was to be an ‘all age’ service, catering for everyone and I’d begun to sketch out how the theme could be reflected: I thought it was important that this story was part of Christmas. Eventually I was advised ‘No: we are going to keep it Christmassy’.

(My memory is selective, but in hindsight this was one of the events that culminated in a period of eased working and eventually leaving church ministry: you can only live so long in an institution where you don’t feel psychologically safe, although congregations were invariably wonderful- still are in fact).

I ‘need’ this passage today though:-

Everything doesn’t happen for a reason.

Heartfelt prayers bounce back as if the heavens are brass.

Sometimes things are just shit.

Good people die.

‘You can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs’ said no egg ever…

The innocents become easy targets or ‘collateral damage’.

‘Holy Innocents Day’ is not part of my tradition, but I wish it was: holding this story up as part of Christmas keeps unanswerable questions, suffering, and death as part of the story: not everything ends in resolution and a perfect cadence- in fact nothing ever really does. 

It’s a pity that the ‘Coventry Carol’ – one of the only carols that reflects this story-is rarely sung in many churches now in the desire to keep all things ‘Christmassy’. This version, by Sufjan Stevens is beautiful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOot8OEI_ok . If you so desire, you can google the lyrics of ‘Unto us is born a son’ which is the other carol that refers to it.

The words that end the passage are eerily prescient for today:-

“A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.

Some cultures celebrate this day as a day of merrymaking for children. I guess that’s a way of honouring this story whilst at the same time saying ‘Up yours’ to death and suffering: much in the way that that congregation at Shane MacGowan’s began to dance when ‘Fairytale of New York- the only popular Christmas song that says not everything works out- was played.

Anyway…Happy Christmas…

(* Matthew 2:13-22 if you are interested. It wouldn’t make anyone’s ‘greatest hits’ of well known Bible verses and most scholars are agreed that the events depicted are unlikely to have happened, however, most capricious despots had form in this area)