Christmas Lights.

I really do love Christmas decorations. However, all the Christmas decorations in my house have to go through a very complicated calculation system in my head. How much enjoyment will I get out of this Vs how much effort it is putting it up and taking it down. 

Thankfully, a wreath does very well within the system – I get huge enjoyment from it, plus a door with a wreath is just lush, but it’s also not a faff to take down at all.  Then there’s the added benefit that my street don’t really do outside decorations, so my door is often crowned the fanciest on the street

The tree is the biggest problem – it involves clambering up into the loft to get the many boxes. Messing around with the pesky tree stand and then spending many hours hoovering up pine needles. 

Lights are also a faff, but you’ve got to have some on the tree. Personally, I go for warm white ones, but my neighbour has bright white lights that look amazing! My mum goes for colourful ones, which coupled with the decorations that my sister and I made when we were younger and the random ones we’ve bought over the years, looks really good.

I imagine in there’ll be quite the variety of Christmas lights colour choice opinions out there. You might even be one of those amazing people who does their entire house with lights. I’d just like to say thank you very much, because I enjoy driving past lit-up houses a lot!

Because even though lights are a huge faff! Putting them up and taking them down, in my very logical system, they’re worth the effort. Because they deal with an even bigger problem than the boringness of taking decorations down – they deal with the problem of darkness. 

I sometimes think I quite like it when it’s dark and wintery but actually what I really like are all the lights. Even the most humble string of fairy lights are beautiful in the darkness…

…but what’s most amazing about any light is that it can’t be defeated by the darkness. 

Now, over all the lockdowns I made very good use of my Disney Plus account and for the first time watched some Star Wars. Episode 2 was not my cup of tea but on the whole I quite liked it. What struck me in the saga is that the light and the dark are treated like equal forces, always keeping us on the edge of our seats wondering who will win. 

But light and dark aren’t equally matched forces.

The darkness can’t actually compete at all against the light – it doesn’t matter how dark my sitting room is, I can still see the little blue light from the router. 

If we wanted to make this room pitch black, we’ve have to turn out the light – we couldn’t leave on the lights and add more darkness, or flip the darkness switch, to overcome the light.

Adding more darkness is a nonsense. 

Because light always defeats darkness. 

Which is why, as a decoration, Christmas lights are completely worth the effort of having to take down because they do a good job of defeating the winter darkness! 

This is what the Bible says too – if you’ve been to a traditional carol service, you’ll have probably heard the beginning of John’s gospel where he says: 

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. 

The darkness cannot overcome light. 

Except the light he’s talking about isn’t Christmas lights – it’s Jesus. And the darkness isn’t just the absence of sunshine – it’s not knowing God. 

Christmas is all about how the darkness in the world has been fixed by the birth of the baby Jesus who is called the light. 

He shows us exactly who God because he is God. 

Because of Jesus, we can know God and know the end of darkness. 

When Jesus was a man, he took the darkness of the world to the cross where it died with him and then he rose again and destroyed it forever. 

Jesus is the light who means we can know God and know life as it’s meant to be. All of this was no small effort for Jesus.

But if he were to put his coming to earth as a baby through the same calculation system I put putting up decorations through, it turns out his level of delight of us being able to know him far outstrips any work that he has done for us.  

He is the light that defeats all darkness.

By Jessica Sanderson.