At the natural level all sorts of good things can be said about the darkness: it gives a period of dormancy (at least in northern climates) from which things can sprout and grow as the light of the sun returns. What would spring be without the contrast of winter from which it can spring into new life? The seasonal cycles bear a rich variety in the experience of life, giving time and periods for growth, rest, harvest and death. Underneath all of that is the basic reality that light is warmth and life and sustenance. The sun's light is the basis for almost all life - from plants to the animals that feed on them, to those creatures who feed those animals. For us, without light there is no life. Perhaps it is in the midst of a long winter night, gathered around the warmth and light of a fire, that we feel viscerally the need of light and the life that it brings in our lives.

Not surprisingly then, light is for human beings a positive symbol for other things - a metaphor for goodness, truth, knowledge and understanding, while darkness, light's absence, speaks of ignorance, evil and deceit. And so John can proclaim that "God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all"(1 John 1:5), while Jesus, in Matthew's Gospel can speak of separation from God as being "thrown into the outer darkness." (8:12)

Scripture gives no indication of the time of year when Christ was born. Christians did not have an annual celebration for Christ's birth until the fourth century. Yet, when that annual celebration we call Christmas was begun, it was the darkest time of the year that was chosen for it. Several reasons have been put forward for this, including competition with the Roman celebration of Sol Invictus - the unconquered sun - but whatever role these cultural considerations might have played, the foundation of it rested on the Christian proclamation that Jesus Christ was and is the light of God come into the world in the midst of the pervading darkness of sin, hatred and evil. As John tells us, "What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people." (John 1:3-4)

In many of our Christmas carols we sing of the birth of the Savior, echoing the words of the angels in Luke's nativity story. Yet "saviour" begs the question, "saved from what?" The artificial light of human propaganda, self-deception and false security can often obliterate the reality that is the darkness of sin in our lives and in human life throughout our world. Sometimes we need to ponder the darkness in order to truly receive the light. Paradoxically, it is the light's presence that exposes what has been, and is still, darkness.