Garth George: The true Christmas spirit brings comfort and cheer

What a sad and sorry season it would be for thousands of New Zealanders - and millions of people round the world - if it weren't for the ministrations of Jesus Christ, whose birth we traditionally celebrate on December 25.

Perhaps more than at any other time of the year there is evidence aplenty that the Saviour of the world is living among us, for his Spirit year after year unleashes in his disciples and followers a desire to serve their fellow man.

In his lifetime Jesus fed two multitudes, who had travelled to hear him preach, using just a few loaves of bread and a few cooked fish.

On Sunday his people will, in this country alone, provide meals for thousands at Christmas dinners in every city and many towns, organised just for those who would otherwise spend the day in hunger and loneliness.

A few loaves and fishes, however, will be replaced by many hundreds of kilograms of hams, turkeys, chickens, potatoes, salads and desserts.

Christ's missions and churches will also ensure that there is at least one gift for everyone, and there will be many for whom that gift is the only one.

Many thousands more New Zealanders will by now have received food and gift parcels from Christian charities which they will share in their impoverished homes on Sunday.

In prisons throughout the country fathers and mothers will know that their children, many of whom live in poverty, will receive a Christmas gift. It will come to them from Christ through his Prison Fellowship, whose annual Angel Tree programme provides.

Thanks to the burgeoning of our prison population, the fellowship found itself a month out from Christmas for the first time caught short of money for Angel Tree. Until this year it has had plenty from its committed contributors.

The plea went out to make up the shortfall and Christ's people - and many who are not -opened their hearts and wallets and every prisoner's child has been catered for.

Around the isolated settlements of the East Cape, where widespread poverty remains hidden from most of the nation, a lone Henderson woman has lately for the 10th year in a row sought out the poor and the destitute and in Christ's name provided for what needs as she is able.

Those for whom she provides physical and spiritual sustenance - food, clothing, bedding, books, toys, prayer - call her their "angel".

No one else seems to care much about the plight of these people. Says the angel: "If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't believe that conditions like this are possible in New Zealand. God sent me to East Cape."

In Manurewa a couple of Saturdays ago, local churches at short notice presented a Christmas festival at the request of the local community board in place of a defunct Santa parade.

Santa Claus was absent from the festival, but not noticeably, and instead of the expected 2000-odd people, it attracted a crowd estimated at its peak to number 6500.

Throughout New Zealand in recent weeks churches have presented exhibitions and tableaux telling the true Christmas story, which have brought enjoyment to tens of thousands of adults and children.

In Christchurch a couple of Fridays ago 1000 children packed St Christopher's Anglican Church in Avonhead - many of them bussed from schools in other suburbs - to see a Christmas extravaganza.

In Cathedral Square and at Spreydon Baptist Church in the garden city more than 20,000 people have seen Christmas displays which include grottos and toylands and mangers and all the things that draw oohs and aahs from spellbound children.

In Auckland the central-city Baptist Tabernacle's Christmas display has had to turn away school groups for lack of time and room; at Greenlane Christian Centre thousands will experience its annual Christmas drive-thru; and on the North Shore the Birkdale Community Church again staged its Christmas Wonderland tree display which drew 12,500 visitors.

In every case these events have involved scores of Christ's servants in thousands of hours of voluntary effort and financial sacrifice to bring alive the wondrous story of that first Christmas Day.

In cinemas throughout the nation The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe will entertain tens of thousands over the festive season, thanks to the writings of C.S. Lewis, who served his Lord Jesus as one of the finest Christian writers of the 20th century.

A colleague of mine in the United States describes the Disney version of the Lewis classic as "one of the best religious films of all time".

It is, of course, just the latest contribution that Christianity has made to the world of art, without which it would be a poor thing indeed.

Meanwhile, in Bethlehem, just 500m from the purported site of the manger in which the Christ-child was born on that winter's night, 2000-odd years ago because there was no room at the inn, poor and destitute women of all races and creeds, married and unmarried, will in Israel's winter season give birth in warmth and comfort in the Holy Family Hospital, which was built by the Catholic Church on the orders of the late Pope John Paul II.

How much sicker and sadder and nastier the world would be without Christ and those of his disciples and followers who choose to do his bidding - and not just at this time of the year but all year and every year.

I wonder what the atheists, the humanists and the rationalists are doing for Christmas ...