I’m driving home for Christmas

The Retune Blog - 1st December 2023

So, have you heard your first Christmas song of the year yet? Someone told me there was a Christmas radio station which launched in October pumping out Christmas hits 24/7!

Whenever I listen to Christmas hits I’m always struck by how many of the lyrics focus on the importance of relationships in our lives. Take, for example, this week’s song, Chris Rea’s Driving Home for Christmas:

I'm driving home for Christmas. Oh, I can't wait to see those faces … Get my feet on holy ground … With a thousand memories.

Strangely, this relevance of relationship and Christmas is also reiterated by the opposite experience. For many people, Christmas can be a lonely and distressing time as they are confronted once again by the loss of loved ones or complications in relationships.

In both cases, Christmas is clearly a time that reminds us of just how important our relationships, and the memories and support they can create are to our being as humans. Relationships can be an almost holy experience. This is something that the traditional nativity story reflects. The idea of an all powerful creator becoming a helpless baby to restore relationship.

Yet apart from Christmas music, probably the other thing you can’t help but notice are the Christmas adverts. Many of the ‘best ones’ also reflect the idea of the importance of relationships at Christmas. However, it is always with one subtle twist; to get us to buy stuff. It’s almost a perversion of the Christmas message - from the importance of relationships as something of vulnerability, commitment and sacrifice, to spending as a way of buying, or at least strengthening your love.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that giving people gifts is a bad thing. It’s just that if we emphasise spending and consuming as the signs of a strong relationship or good Christmas, we can miss the real magic. The magic that happens when people place an emphasis on the importance of their relationships and how this will impact their life, even when the other person doesn’t notice:

So I sing for you, though you can't hear me. When I get through, oh and feel you near me …

Christmas, the music, the gifts, the tele, it only means anything if we let it into our relationships on every level. So, whatever we might buy, eat, drink, sing or give this Christmas, let’s make sure it starts with the giving of ourselves.