Unsanitised Reality

We first had a television in 1961. I remember two programmes about hospitals. One, ‘Emergency Ward 10’ was a hospital-based drama series. I guess it was one of the first soap operas. Its storylines centred on the personal lives of the doctors and nurses; the hospital and medical matters were the context, but all medical details were sanitised and gentle.

In ‘Your Life In Their Hands’, cameras were taken into real operating theatres to witness actual surgeons at work. The (albeit black-and white) visuals included all the blood-and-guts details as we saw the skills of surgeons working with new medical techniques in their unsanitised reality of hospital life.

We’re surrounded by sanitised views of Christmas – Santa, who gives nice presents to good children… loving, families who come together and share, play and laugh… homes with festive lights, a roaring fire, friends ‘popping in’… a white doll dressed in spotless clothes in a purpose-built manger containing clean straw…

Sue teaches children excluded from their main-stream schools. Yesterday we were considering… the neuro-divergent children for whom Christmas is distressing because it disrupts their important routines… children whose families are far from loving or secure – where Christmas will test their relational fragility… parents who can’t afford presents for their children, those whose financial priorities exclude the well-being of their children. Their unsanitised reality of Christmas…

Yesterday in church minister-Lou was encouraging us to see the unsanitised reality of the Christmas narrative… the disgraced teenage pregnancy miles from family and home… smelly unknown shepherds ‘of no fixed abode’, living in fields, chosen to visit the Christ-child first… posh, rich wise men, from a different culture, speaking a foreign language, embracing a different religion, directed to Bethlehem…

This week I’m seeking to lift my eyes above the comfortable and cosy, the secure and sanitised, the trouble-free traditions, to see with fresh eyes the unsanitised reality of the lives of those around me, and discover new truth from the unsanitised reality of the baby in the manger.