Christmas: Holy Communion, Tea and Toast

Christmas: Holy Communion, Tea and Toast

Written by Dan McDonald

 

            The Christmases I grew up with as a little child were mostly family gatherings.  My father described Christmas as a celebration for children.  It was a magical moment when children would find a toy, a train, a sled, a bicycle under the tree left there by a magical person who could travel the whole world in a single night.  Later in the day we would have cousins coming to join us and have a big dinner with lots of pies and even soda pop.  In our family having soda pop in the house was an occasion for maybe three or four family celebrations in a year.  We might get soda pop when we went to the store, but having it in our house well that was for special occasions only.  I grew up knowing Christmas as a family gathering.

            Then after I became a Christian I knew it as a remembrance of how Jesus came into the world.  I suppose after a while I sort of joined in the chorus of religious folks wanting everybody to remember who the reason for the season was.  Now I realize that for a lot of families, there is not a lot of a connection to Christian truths in their view of Christmas.  A lot of people, I don’t know if a minority or majority of Americans celebrate Christmas far more as a moment for saying we believe in something even if we do not know in what we believe.  Maybe we simply believe that hope paves the way for children to become adults and to be the sort of adults worthy of paving the way for more children to enter the world.  It only takes a little humanity looking into the face of a child to see there is magic and hope to be experienced in the little life of a child looking upwards at his or her parent’s face.

            I’ve realized something in a young Englishwoman’s song this year.  Lucy Spraggan, a young lady from Sheffield in England wrote a song dedicated to her grandfather (see corrective note below) called “Tea and Toast”.  This has sort of become one of my new favorites to listen to.  She wrote it in honor of her grandfather (see note below the main part of this article).  It tells a story that helped cement four or five generations of a family.  It tells a story of how when “your hearts’ lost all its hope, after dawn there will be sunshine … and in the morning I’ll make you up some tea and toast.”

            I think now I am beginning to understand that the family gatherings we enjoy are part of the sprout generated from the earthen soil of our original creation.  We are meant to be individuals but we were never meant to be “alone” much less “lonely.”  We were always meant to be men and women connected to humanity, in society, in love, in families, in tribes, in faith.  The family gathering is an echo of our creation in God’s image as the Holy Communion is a promise of our full redemption of that unity for which we were created.

            Lucy Spraggan’s song has its darkness.  Many families this Christmas will have lost someone from their table.  This is something which makes her song so beautiful for this time of year.  There will be empty chairs around many a family gathering, where last year someone sat and spoke and laughed.  They will have departed.  So this Christmas families will tell the stories of what such a one would have said, and there will be a word so similar to what Lucy Spraggan sings “and in the morning I’ll make you up some tea and toast.”  I suppose this is where I find the hope of the Holy Communion to be a much greater, hope, for we keep his table to remember his death until he comes again.  We remember that he has already risen and ascended and overcome death.  This hope of incarnation is meant to take root in our hearts and through us to spring to life within our family gatherings.

            Those who grew up somewhat like me often moved into understandings of Christian community that felt like the spiritual and the secular had to be radically different.  But are their approaches so radically different?  I don't think so, not humanly speaking.  The biologists tell us human beings are pack animals, community is part of our being human.  It is in our blood, it is part of the way we were created.  So we create traditions, and celebrate around tables eating foods we associate with the celebration whether bread and wine or tea and toast.  The distinction between the spiritual and familiar is not a distinction between valid and invalid humanity, but a distinction between acting out our nature as we are and being brought into the fullness of the hope and promise of our redemption.  But when we celebrate the birth of Christ we celebrate incarnation and the incarnation (God becoming one of us) makes sense of and helps sort out all the sorts of celebrations of community that matter to us as human beings.  So a song like "tea and toast" does not compete with the incarnation, but rather the incarnation validates the experience every songwriter and poet reveals who tells a story of a lasting human connection.

            So for this Christmas I will start a new tradition and keep an old one.  The old one is that I will attend the Christmas Eve vigil where we wait for the Christ child to be born.  Our church will darken until a single candle is lit showing forth the incarnation.  That candle will light the next one; and that one the next one, until the whole church is lit by the candles of the congregation for Christ has brought light into the world.  On Christmas morning, for my new tradition, whether for a year or a lifetime, I will make a simple breakfast of tea and toast.

Note:  Following writing and posting this blog, I discovered that my notion she wrote this of her grandfather had been incorrect.  But it was written in honor of a real couple.  Still worthy I think of waking up on Christmas morning and honoring this song's story with a breakfast of Tea and Toast.