On December 15, 1945, after five years of evacuation and 80 years ago, the people of the Channel Island of Alderney returned home. Whilst the other Channel Islands had been occupied and then liberated in May, the people of Alderney had not been able to return home as the island had been largely destroyed and was rat infested. So, the Homecoming was particularly special as they came back to rebuild their lives.
As the first ship sailed in, John MacCarthy played on his cornet the song: ‘There’s no place like home.’ Every year since that same cornet and that same song has been played at the Homecoming Service in St Anne’s Church. This year, as with so many before, it was played again by Charlie Greenslade, one of the original Homecomers:
Well I say now home, home sweet home
There's no place like home
Wherever you wander
There's no place like home
The Duchess of Edinburgh came this past week to mark the 80th anniversary, and as the islands are attached to the diocese, I was there as Bishop for the Channel Islands. There was, indeed, no place like home for the Homecomers, 80 years on.
So much of our lives are defined by the music or the song that goes with the moment, describing important and sacred moments through words and music in order to speak not just to the head and the heart, but to the soul. The carols we sing at Christmas do just that, which is why in these days of increasing congregations here and elsewhere, the people come and come back to sing:
O come, all ye faithful,
Joyful and triumphant,
O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem;
Come and behold him
Born the King of Angels.
But a change has been taking place according to new research. Over the last 50 years, our song lyrics have been getting sadder, and as Elton John sang, Sad songs say so much. This shift in tone mirrors a broader, generational change to sadder, more angst-ridden lyrics, especially in popular music. Now of course, writers and composers have always reflected the public mood and articulated our literal mood music, but university research has shown that we are becoming more miserable. Indeed, the Times headline describing this recently said, ‘Heaven knows pop is miserable now.’* Perhaps it is to the language of heaven that we need to return, therefore:
O little town of Bethlehem,
how still we see the lie!
above the deep and dreamless sleep
the silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
the everlasting Light;
the hopes and fears of all the years are met indeed tonight.
Popular songs have become more introspective, angrier, gloomier and more confessional in line with the mental health issues we see in the young. Adele laments ‘I feel my life is flashing by/And all I can do is watch and cry.’ Whilst Taylor Swift who is no stranger to living out her emotional life through her songs says, ‘I’m so sick of running as fast as I can. Wondering if I’d get there quicker if I was a man.’
Of course, it is not universal, there is much to cheer us up. I always turn to Mr Blue Sky when I need to revive the soul. But it does seem that the increase in choice, freedom to travel far from home and never return, the lack of trust and financial insecurity in the face of growing wealth for the super-rich few, all seem to bring us down and dwell in the melancholy. Perhaps we need to remind ourselves of happier times and our more innocent times:
Be near me, Lord Jesus, I asked me to stay
close by me forever, and love me, I pray.
Bless all the dear children in thy tender care,
and fit us for heaven, to live with the there.
There is an irony that the generation who faced war, occupation, and evacuation did not feel like this. Packing up your troubles in your old kit bag, reminded them that We’ll meet again, and the Bluebirds would be over the White cliffs of Dover. Our generations seem to face a different desperation and the wearing down of recognisable norms and safe places.
But mere nostalgia won’t break us out of this. Christmas is not nostalgia gone mad for a few days, it is a revisiting of the greatest story ever told, a homecoming to the truth that God made his home with us and that there is, amid all the muck and mess of humanity, hope that we might find our home in heaven:
And our eyes at last shall see him,
through his own redeeming love,
for that child so dear and gentle
is our Lord in heaven above,
and he leads his children on
to the place where he is gone.
Sadness is, in terms of the soul, directly linked to faith. If we do not have faith, we perish. Sad things and bad things will happen, but faith in the love that was so generous that it chose to be born among us and as one of us is what has lasted and is what endures. It is not a lookback to the past, but a confident hope for the future, of what the future can be. A future of faith will be happier, will help our hearts sing and will unite us around the Prince of Peace. This is why the recent attempt by some to take the Christian message hostage for a political end is doomed. Christ is in Christmas and does not need to be ‘put back’ – the clue is in the name, Christmas.
No, our joy is to be placing our faith that those who built this place and those who still witness in our parishes, in our chaplaincies and in our schools keep the faith that was and is and ever shall be. A happier future is a more faithful future, placing our trust and our confidence in the God who is faithful. That is our song, this is our hope, and we are God’s people, following as disciples the Word made flesh:
Hark! The herald angels sing glory to the new-born King!
Imagine that you had been sent away from home, by force, for five long years. Or imagine, like so many in Gaza or the Sudans, you would have no home to return to after this service. What would you sing? Would you sing songs of sadness or anguish, or songs of hope and returning. Christmas reminds us; however we are and however we are feeling today that we all have a home because God has made his home among us. There is joy to the world, and today, it is here, in the home of your heart. Christmas is our human homecoming:
Hail to heaven-born Prince of peace!
Hail the son of righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings.
Mild he lays his glory by,
born that man no more may die,
born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth:
Hark! the herald angels sing glory to the new-born King.
Rt Revd Stephen Lake, Bishop of Salisbury and Bishop for the Channel Islands
*The Times, article Rhys Blakely and leading Article 12.12.25