Madam, - There is a certain sleight of hand in the use by "G.F." of the Epistle of James ("Waiting for Christ's coming", Thinking Anew, December 11th) in relation to the "coming of the Lord" at Christmas time.
When James writes (2.5) of "the kingdom which God promised to them that love him" or of the eschatology of Jesus (5.7-9, summed up in the statement "the coming of the Lord is at hand"), he has in mind not the Incarnation but the Second Coming.
Dr Arthur Cadoux, in his masterful 1944 book, The Thought of St James, writes as his very first sentence: "The Epistle of St James is theologically notorious for having no mention of incarnation."
No Incarnation (which also happens to be the emphasis of Mark's Gospel) means no Christmas in the conventional sense. And it is healthy, amid all the over-indulgence in "the Christmas myth", to remember that the first Christmas celebration did not take place until the year 354 in Rome.
In the primitive church, Christianity was practised entirely without reference to Christmas, and historical realism demands the readoption of that stance now.
Might it ever be the case, however culturally shocking this appears to be, that the celebration of Christmas is at root a very unChristian activity, imported in fact into Christianity from elsewhere (December 25th was the birthday of Mithras, and when Mithraism was overcome by Christianity, the cult of the vanquished was taken over as token by the vanquishers)? Some token now, when the tail has come to wag the dog to such an absurd degree! - Yours, etc.,
Dr MARTIN PULBROOK, New Meeting House, Prince's Street, Cork.