God moved into the neighbourhood

Christmas isn’t an escape from real life – it is God engaging with reality with all its messiness and brokenness, writes James Glass.

In the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, hangs a picture known as ‘The Stalingrad Madonna’. Drawn by a German pastor and doctor, Kurt Reuber, on the back of a Russian map captured during the battle of Stalingrad, the picture depicts Mary holding the baby Jesus, their heads almost touching, mother and child enfolded in a great cloak. Down one side are the words light, life and love.

Reuber sketched the picture in the dark and brutally cold days of 1942 when the German Sixth Army was surrounded by their Russian enemies. Morale was at a low ebb.

Reuber took his drawing around all the bunkers and remarked on the impact it seemed to have on the soldiers.

He then hung the drawing in his own bunker in time for his unit’s Christmas meal. Once again, the presence of his drawing seemed to change the whole atmosphere.

Many associate Christmas with more of an escape from the everyday and the challenges it brings. The Christmas season is one of celebration and an opportunity to down tools during the last week of the year.

And so it should be! Unfortunately, however, much of the superficiality and sentimentality that has grown up around Christmas has little relevance to the real difficulties of life, never mind the harsh realities and deprivations of war.

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