Christmas Special
What will you be doing on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day, after you’ve opened your presents, eaten your Christmas dinner, maybe taken the dog for a walk?
Maybe like millions of British people, you will sit down to watch some Christmas television?
When I was growing up, the TV Christmas Special was a hugely popular event at this time of year. Of course, we had no Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney Plus: we just had three channels – until some time in the 1980s Channel 4 came along.
Oh, how we waited in anticipation for the Two Ronnies Christmas Special, the Only Fools and Horses Christmas Special, the Mike Yarwood Christmas Special! These were simpler times, you realise.
Probably my favourite Christmas Special of all is the two-part The Office Christmas Special, which was first shown in 2003 and which were the final episodes ever made. You may have seen the American spin-off starring Steve Carell.
The Office is a mockumentary - a fictional programme which is pretending to be a real-life documentary, set in an office in unglamorous Slough. The star of the show is the office manager David Brent, played by Ricky Gervais, who is a cringingly awful character, and at whose constant mishaps and lack of self-awareness we laugh.
In every episode of The Office we witness, and laugh at, David Brent making all sorts of social mishaps, desperately trying to be cool and popular but basically being an idiot, of which he is completely unaware.
He is also unlucky in love. Time after time, he has disappointing blind dates, so by the time of the Christmas special, the audience despair that he’ll ever find happiness.
But in the Christmas special something surprising happens. Brent invites a woman to the office Christmas party, and she accepts. She is pretty, intelligent and seems genuinely to like him, and he really likes her. For once, he doesn’t mess it up by saying or doing something embarrassing. His laddish workmates can’t believe it. The usual tone of ridicule and cynicism where everything always goes wrong for Brent changes to one of hope: just maybe things can work out for the best, people can find love and fulfilment, and be happy. As well as Brent’s happiness, in a brilliant, unexpected plot twist, Dawn and Tim also get together, after she dumps her horrible boyfriend and returns to the office party to be with Tim.
Why do I mention this today? Well, it seems to me that so often in these TV Christmas specials - and believe you me, I’ve seen a few - something of the Christmas spirit breaks through what is often a rather bleak view of human nature, to suggest that people can change, become better, kinder and be happy. Even though most of the creators of these shows don’t have a faith, I believe that the glory of the Incarnation, and what it means for the world, breaks through nonetheless.
Because, as I have said to you before, Christmas is about change: change for the better. The greatest change in the history of the world is that God entered the world as a fragile, human baby. If that can happen, and I believe it did happen, then I can change and become the 'me' that God created me to be. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins puts it like this:
But the Bethlehem star may lead me
To the sight of Him who freed me
From the self that I have been.
‘Freed me / From the self that I have been.’ My prayer for us all as we approach the end of term and the Christmas season is that we can all be inspired by the baby Jesus to reflect on the term we have had, celebrate the successes, and be inspired to be even kinder, more inclusive, more positive members of this remarkable school community in 2026.
And if you get the opportunity, do watch The Office Christmas special in the holidays.
Happy Christmas.