Sting on Christmas

This past week, I've been listening with great interest to music by an artist that I have been aware of, but consciously avoided - Sting!

After hearing a snippet of him singing Gabriel's Message, I bought the album (at Starbuck's!) and started listening in earnest. I soon realized that I purchased not only some very different Christmas music - but a full postmodern commentary on Christmas itself. Here are some selected comments from the liner notes of 'If on a Winter's Night':

"Since the first millennium the festival of Christmas has become the central and defining event of the winter season: the story of Christ's birth contains many magical elements, prefigured by ancient prophecy: the god king born among animals in a stable, the mysterious star in the East, the three Wise Men, King Herod and the Slaughter of the Innocents, Mary and Joseph and the conundrum of the Virgin Birth. I appreciate the beauty of these stories and how they have inspired musicians and poets for many centuries . It was my desire to treat those themes with reverence and respect, and despite my personal agnosticism, the sacred symbolism of the Church's art still exerts a powerful influenced over me."

"Implicit in the story of the birth of Christ is the knowledge of his death and his subsequent Resurrection. This is what connects it to the secular songs about the cycle of the seasons. We are reminded that there is light and life at the center of the darkness that is Winter - or conversely, that , no matter how comfortable we feel in the cradle, there is darkness and danger all around us."

"The magical quality of the Christian story is not diminished by the knowledge that much of the myth of Christmas seems to have been superimposed upon an ancient matrix. ...For me it was important to draw parallels between the Christian story and the older traditions of the winter solstice. ...These myths and stories are our common cultural heritage, and as such need to be kept alive through reinterpretation within the contest of contemporary thinking, even if that thinking is essentially agnostic. ...all of us need our myths to live by.. "

These comments are very instructive to those of us who want to understand how thoughtful non-Christians view Christmas - and the Christian faith itself. Christianity is seen to be mythic in the same way the older pagan stories of the WinterSolstice are mythic. There is an appreciation for the 'beauty' and power of the stories, but an attitude of personal agnosticism. And there is some genuine insight into the mystery of Christ's Incarnation, Death and Resurrection. Finally, Sting acknowleges the power of the Chrisitan story over him. I imagine that it would quite stimulating to sit down and have a chat with him about The Faith. But it seems to me it would be very difficult to move him from his thoughtful Agnosticism to personal faith - indeed only God can do this, I know.

We need to pray that God Himself would open the eyes of the heart so that people like Sting can understand the true power and beauty of the Christian story - not just as story, but as reality!