It’s Christmas Eve. And it feels strange writing, on Christmas Eve, an article due for publication on Holy Week. But that’s precisely what I’ve been doing all day.

This exercise really does give a twist to the meaning of Christmas for me. It takes the commercial glimmer away from Christmas and dissipates the sparkle from the eyes of baby Jesus when I have to be contemplating on how he would one day have to have the weight of his body supported by three nails pinned onto a cross.

On Christmas, we speak of the arrival of hope. But the coming of this hope was embellished with a host of unrealistic expectations about how God would save his people at his coming. When Christmas is commemorated through the lenses of an excruciating crucifixion, suddenly there’s a pain that comes with it.

Christmas is the arrival of hope. But by the time of the realisation of hope at Easter, one realises that the journey towards hope must pass through a Good Friday.

A Blessed Christmas to you, as we together remember that hope is one that brings together with it pain.