On 2 February 2009, London was hit by a very severe snowstorm which brought the capital to a standstill. For an extraordinary two days, nothing could move; no-one could travel to work or school, people had no choice except to stay at home and admire the beautiful winter scenery. Families took to the parks to make snowmen. Police threw snowballs at each other. The headline of one newspaper described ‘London’s day of innocence’.

The country had already endured months of bad news about the economic crash. After the snowfall, experts were saying that this would cost the economy so many more billions of lost revenue. And yet, the popular mood was: we don’t care! People saw their helplessness as an opportunity to re-connect with one another, to play, to enjoy nature at its most enchanting.

‘London’s day of innocence’. This was a chance for a ‘reset’, a return to pure, child-like enjoyment, even just for a day. There is something of this in most people’s ideal of Christmas. We even associate the feast with snow, dreaming of a ‘white Christmas’, when the world is wrapped in innocence and wonder.

I welcome you tonight to our parish, to our own ‘night of innocence’. There was plenty of it earlier, when we had our children’s Christmas service, and the church was a rowdy sea of shepherds and angels, all tinsel and tea-towels. We enacted the Nativity story once again, exactly the same as last year, and the year before that. Of course it is a special event for our children. But even for the adults – especially for the adults – Christmas is an invitation to reset. Each year we hope and we try to re-connect with what is most important and most precious in our lives. Each year we hope that things will be better, we hope that we will be better.

The reading from the Book of Isaiah, written seven hundred years before the birth of Christ, speaks of the same hope for better things. A child has been born, an important child, presumably a prince, or the son of a powerful family. Because of this birth, everything will be different. The people’s joy is described in the simplest of terms: it is the joy of a good harvest, or the joy of a lasting peace after a vicious conflict. It is a joy of people in a precarious, dangerous world, who know that now they will be safe and well.

We don’t know who this child is who brings such relief and happiness. But the earliest Christians, reading Isaiah hundreds of years later, identified him immediately. They saw this as a prophecy of Christ, and the difference Christ makes. In the second reading, Paul’s writes to Titus that Christ wishes ‘to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good’.

‘Eager to do what is good!’ Somewhere in the television schedules for this holiday you will see the classic film based on Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol. Ebenezer Scrooge is transformed, from a money-obsessed hater of people, to someone who comes to recognise, like Marley’s ghost, that ‘mankind is my business’. Through the Christmas message, Scrooge discovers his humanity, he becomes human. And at the heart of the Christmas story, God in Christ becomes human. God declares, if you like, that ‘mankind is my business’.

But Christmas is more than just about us becoming better people. At Mass there is a very special prayer said over the gifts: ‘may we come to share the divine life of Christ, who humbled himself to share our human life’. Christ shares our life, so that we can become more like God. The early Christians called this the ‘marvellous exchange’, as if we are in some wonderful way swapping places with God. This really is a ‘reset’.

So... we have come this evening to listen to the Christmas story once again, so that by taking it to heart, each of us will become a little bit more generous, a little more human; more like the second version of Scrooge, with all his child-like enthusiasm. But there is more than this. In giving his Son to us, God is inviting us to be with him, and share his life, not just for one day of innocence, but forever.

I will end with the words of my favourite Christmas carol. O Little Town of Bethlehem. speaks of ‘the hopes and fears of all the years’, including the hopes and fears of the anxious people, rejoicing all those hundreds of years before Christ, and so many people since then.

O holy Child of Bethlehem
Descend to us, we pray
Cast out our sin and enter in
Be born to us today
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell
O come to us, abide with us
Our Lord Emmanuel.

I wish you and your families a happy and blessed Christmas.