Christmas Message 2025 from Rev Langley

Full Text: This year we’ve heard renewed calls – especially from some of the more extreme political voices – to ‘put Christ back into Christmas'. How should we respond?

In one sense, Christians have said that for years — but it originally came from a very different place.

It didn’t come from a desire to ‘claim our country back.’
It didn’t come from drawing battle lines.
It didn’t come from using Jesus as a cultural marker to decide who belongs and who doesn’t.

It came from a longing for personal renewal
in a season drowning under consumerism —
the pressure to buy more, do more, impress more.
A world of ‘shop until you drop.’

We used to joke that Christmas without Christ spells M and S,
but I want to say something deeper:

Putting Christ back into Christmas has nothing to do with slogans,
and everything to do with the shape of our hearts.

Because here is the truth we cannot ignore:

You cannot put Christ back into Christmas while rejecting the very people Christ identifies with.

You cannot claim Christ while vilifying refugees.
You cannot honour Christ while stirring fear of migrants.
You cannot preach ‘Christian values’ while practising cruelty.
You cannot wave a cross with one hand and clench a fist with the other.

The real Jesus – the Jesus Christians follow – refuses to be used as a tool in a culture war.

He cannot be conscripted into nationalism.
He cannot be reshaped into a mascot for purity or exclusion.

Because Jesus is Jewish.
Jesus is Palestinian.
Jesus is brown-skinned and Middle Eastern.
Jesus is born under occupation.
Jesus begins life as a refugee, carried across borders by parents fleeing violence.

If that unsettles us, then perhaps it should -
because the gospel is meant to unsettle us before it heals us. Traditional Christian values – real ones -
are not about fear, nostalgia, or protecting our comfort.
They are about justice.
They are about dignity.
They are about compassion, humility, and loving our neighbour even when it costs us something.

If you are facing difficult circumstances this Christmas, here is the heart of the message:

The Christ we follow comes to us in vulnerability, not power.
He meets us in our fear, our loneliness, our exhaustion, our longing for hope.
He doesn’t demand perfection — He simply invites us to offer Him our yes.

To be a Christian is not so much to have certainty.
It is to trust that God will walk with you through whatever lies ahead.

And if you have not given God your yes…
then now is the time.

If we truly want Christ at the centre of Christmas,
then Christ must also be at the centre of:

Our welcome.
Our compassion.
Our politics.
And our public witness.

The Christ who stands with the outsider,
the Christ who embraces the vulnerable,
the Christ who begins life as a refugee – that Christ calls us to widen our welcome
and resist every ideology that dehumanises those God loves.

May this Christ unsettle us, renew us,
and teach us again what it really means
to put Christ – the real Christ – at the centre of Christmas.”

And a Merry Christmas to you all