A Christmas Message from the Moderator_{Published 19 Dec 2025}

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‘A Christmas Carol’, starring Alistair Sim. The best version.

‘A Wonderful Life’, a super film starring James Stewart who realises how empty other people’s lives would be if he committed suicide and was not there.

‘The Bishop’s Wife’, Cary Grant as an angel who comes down to earth to help an Episcopalian vicar, David Niven, build a new church.

These are some of the films I expect to see at Christmas. Normally, every Christmas!! Well, they are Christmas films, like ‘Love Actually’, ‘Miracle on 34th Street’, we all have our favourites…

… what about ‘Die Hard’? According to a percentage of the British public, ‘Die Hard’ is not a Christmas movie. A New York cop wearing a white tank top that unaccountably goes from mildly dirty to completely filthy, far too quickly, takes down a bunch of vaguely European terrorists at a Christmas party in a Los Angeles skyscraper, while our unlikely hero attempts to mend the strained relationship with his estranged wife - as Vaughn Monroe croons “let it snow, let it snow, let it snow”.

Notice the clues?

The music - Let it Snow. Winter Wonderland.

 A Christmas party. It begins on Christmas Eve.

McClane’s wife is even called Holly. Surely, it is a must?

Controversial? As controversial as… red wine with fish. A cappuccino in the afternoon!! Pineapple on a pizza!

The film was made in 1988 and even the screenwriter is not sure.

It is funny, we read during Advent, the story of John the Baptist, but this isn’t a Christmas themed picture either!

It is a passage that we would read when Jesus is on the verge of starting his ministry and John tells his listeners that there is one who is coming, who will be baptised that will make the difference – and so, we have to prepare the way levelling mountains, filling in potholes, making a straight path – unlike the constant roadworks in Glasgow!

John is scary. His words are scary. He is crying for change. He wishes folk would wake up, to shake themselves up, to open their eyes and repent and return to what God expects of you, or hell mend you.

Maybe it is a kind-of- ‘Die Hard.’ The man who lives hard, and enjoys locusts for his lunch, faces the danger of hypothermia every night out in the wilderness, wears clothes you might not find even in a charity shop, warns the elite, the influential, the privileged that a time is coming that if they do not mend their ways, they will in fact, die hard.

We send, or used to send, Christmas cards. Some of these cards were traditional nativity scenes but others were of winter wonderlands, snow, sleigh bells, a single robin red breast on a whiteout. Is that about Christmas? Certainly not, if you live on the other side of the world and are baking in the sun.

Nor is the push in society to call the season ‘WinterFest’.

We look forward to Christmas, a Christmas that will celebrate a child born in a barn, warmed at times in his mother’s arms, some swaddling, a cradle, and animals gathering around.  And despite the festivities to come this Christ, this King, will be born for those who live on our city streets, freezing despite our knitted blankets, and who, if nothing changes, will die hard.

Is it one of your favourite Christmas films? A film that makes you all snug and cosy inside, sitting with a cup of cocoa and some nibbles, counting down to the ‘big day’?

Maybe Christmas is not about the manic and frenzied way we make it.

Maybe Christmas is not about family get togethers and Christmas parties.

Is Christmas not about giving hope to the disheartened, a voice to those whose words have been shouted down, to those who face fighting against organisations and the powerful?

Is the reading of John the Baptist about Christmas? Well, yes and no. What it does is point to the Coming Christ who becomes flesh as an infant – a baby born in the midst of occupation, in obscure circumstances and on the margins – not an easy thing to notice! On the margins, where John preached.

And then, of course, we have Christ. Whose ministry was always on the margins even to the Cross, where he does, indeed, die hard.

So, what conclusion have you come to? A Christmas film?

And the message of Christmas – how true are we to straightening paths and making the lives of others more liveable and bearable?

May you and I make the difference and make straight the path for the joy of Christ’s birth be known.

Every blessing this Christmas.

George