The robin on the barbed wire

‘Found it!’ Getting your hands on the perfect gift is the theme humdrum of Debenham’s 2014 Christmas ad, packed with cute kids larking instore after closing time. Marks and Spence promises we can ‘fly with the fairies’, released from the by the M&S experience, zapping perfect presents into people’s laps, and making the world a brighter place. ‘Make someone happy and you will be happy,’ Coca Cola urges.

And then there’s the boy and the penguin in the John Lewis ad. We see Monty, his movements choreographed following intensive research by the film-makers at Edinburgh zoo, through the eyes of the boy’s imagination. Aware of Monty’s wistful glances at kissing couples, and sensing his loneliness, the boy gives him for Christmas a penguin partner in the furry shape of Mabel. In the background: John Lennon’s song Real Love – ‘Thought I’d been in love before, But in my heart I wanted more.’

These ads all have themes closely associated with Christmas: making a difference in people’s lives; the empathic selection of gifts; the power of the ‘right’ present; the joy which blessing others brings us.

But I was concerned by the emphasis on blessing others through buying stuff when in fact we have much more precious things to give which cost nothing financially. Concerned too by the bigger issue that the perfect Christmas these ads encourage us to fantasise about is an illusion.

For many of us will struggle with shadows on Christmas Day – those who are lonely, hurting, depressed, unwell, failed by those who have loved them, accompanied only by memories. There is no hint of this in the artificial magic of the Christmas ads, as carefully conjured as Monty’s animation.

Last Thursday Sainsbury’s released their ad based on the famous football game between German and Allied forces in no-man’s land at Christmas 1914. Here’s an ad which focuses on the masculine, rather than the feminine expression of empathy, an ad which acknowledges darkness. It has the same message as the others – blessing others and being blessed through sharing – but the context is a brief respite in the madness of war. A few hours later the two boys who exchange gifts will once again be trading bullets.

Why can’t we love as consistently and deeply as the Christmas ads urge us? Why do we humans so frequently revert to selfishness and cruelty, inhumanity and war? Are our altruistic instincts fated by the stage evolution has reached to be overcome by the selfish gene?

But the joyful Christmas ads do articulate our longing – at least on our clearer-seeing days – to be better people, helping and encouraging others. I think our deepest yearning is for a purer love than we have known, a purer love which instinctively we know exists, a love which when we find it will make all our previous experiences of love seem, as John Lennon’s song puts it, merely as childish games.

The Sainsbury’s ad has been criticised for making war beautiful – in the lighting and camera-work, in that poignant shot of the robin on the wire fence. Certainly, the trenches and no-man’s land have been sanitised – there are no rats, no decaying corpses – but surely the point of the robin is that in the very place of deepest darkness we can find beauty, love and hope.

And that is the Christian message of Christmas. That into the darkness of a troubled world the light of God’s love came among us in Jesus, a love which is ‘real love’, the love we have longed for, the love which the best of our loving feebly reflects. It’s a love which reveals itself both as tender feminine love, and tough, resolute masculine love.

And whatever darkness we’re facing this Christmas, no matter how deep our pain may be, if we find it in us to lift our eyes, we will see there is a robin on the barbed wire. We are loved by God with an unshakable, unbreakable love, a love which sets us free to learn to love ourselves and to love others.

The powerful tune in the second half of the Sainbury’s ad is The Wicked Flee from the film True Grit. In fact, it’s based on a 19^th century hymn Leaning on the everlasting arms. A reminder that as we seek to live lives of beauty, love and hope in dark places God walks with us, to support and encourage us.

God’s love is a love from which perhaps ‘the wicked flee’ unable to bear its searching intensity; but it’s a love which stands open-armed inviting every last one of us to flee into its transforming embrace. We take the first step when we open our eyes to the reality of Jesus and something deep in us cries out ‘Found him!’

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 20th November 2014)