A season of Joy - Christmas 2020

Why Joy and Happiness Are Not the Same Thing

There is a moment in this Christmas talk where one of the speakers uses an image that sticks. Joy, she says, is like an iceberg. Happiness sits on the surface, visible and constantly shifting with circumstances. But joy runs deep beneath the waterline. It is something altogether different from the emotion that comes and goes depending on whether your day has been good or terrible.

This distinction matters, especially in a year where happiness has been in short supply.

Born Into the Mess

The Christmas story is often presented as something warm and cosy. Carols, candles, nativity scenes with clean straw and a serene-looking Mary. But the reality of the first Christmas was nothing like that.

Jesus was born into an occupied land. The Romans were in charge. The people were oppressed and poor. Bethlehem itself was tiny, possibly home to just three hundred to a thousand people. A couple of streets, not a city. And into this small, struggling place under the thumb of a foreign empire, God chose to unfold the story that would change human history.

"When Jesus was born as a baby, he was born into an occupied land and the Romans were in charge. It was a terrible time. And so the very gift of God that we celebrate at this time of year, we have got to think of the context of when Jesus was born. And it was not necessarily a time of great joy and celebration."

The parallel to modern difficulties was drawn without being forced. The year had been brutal. People had missed weddings, birthdays, holidays. Grief and isolation had been constant companions. And yet here was the claim: the original Christmas happened in circumstances just as bleak, and heaven still wanted to celebrate.

Heaven Could Not Keep Quiet

The angel's announcement to the shepherds is one of the most quoted passages in the Bible, and for good reason. "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy, which will be for all people. For today, in the town of David, a Saviour has been born to you."

What is striking about this scene is not just the message but the audience. The announcement did not go to the religious leaders. It did not go to the powerful or the wealthy. It went to shepherds, people working the night shift in fields outside a tiny town.

And then heaven itself could not contain its excitement. "Suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God."

One of the speakers compared this to the birth of his twins. "I was ringing people up all over the place. I even rang your mama three times by mistake. I just wanted everybody to know the great joy that we had." If that is the reaction to the birth of ordinary babies, how much greater is the reaction when God's master plan to rescue humanity finally arrives?

The Gift and the Gift Giver

The heart of the talk's message about joy came down to a simple but profound idea: joy is a gift, and to understand the gift, you need to know the giver.

"I believe joy is a gift. I believe God gives that gift. And when you understand the giver, you understand the gift."

This is what separates joy from happiness. Happiness is responsive. It depends on what is happening around you. Joy is rooted in something, or someone, that does not change. It comes from knowing the character of God, from the certainty that his goodness is not conditional on circumstances.

"When you know the giver of the gift, you can be joyful in all circumstances. In the happy times and the sad times, we still have joy."

That is a bold claim. And the talk did not shy away from testing it against real life.

Joy in the Midst of Grief

One of the most honest moments came when the conversation turned to personal loss. The co-host shared about losing her mother at a young age and the crisis of faith that followed.

"My mum died very young, and that was a horrendous time. I really struggled with why that had happened, why that had been allowed to happen. She was a lovely, amazing person. It was a real crisis point for me and my faith, because I just could not understand why that would happen."

There was no neat resolution offered. No tidy explanation. Instead, there was something more honest and more helpful.

"I got to the point where I had to just understand that actually I cannot explain some things and I do not understand some things. And that is actually okay. But I can still have that hope. And because I have got a hope for the future, I can have that joy even when I am going through really difficult times."

That admission, that it is acceptable not to have answers, feels particularly important. The Christian faith does not require people to explain away their pain. It invites them to hold the pain and the joy at the same time, which sounds impossible until you actually experience it.

Joy Grows Over Time

The conversation also surfaced something that new Christians or people exploring faith might find reassuring. Joy is not something you either have or you do not. It develops.

"The more I have got to know God, the stronger my faith has become. The stronger my faith has become, the more I have understood hope. The more I have understood hope, the more I have understood joy. These things grow and develop over time."

This is not a switch that flips the moment someone becomes a Christian. It is a deepening relationship, and like all deepening relationships, it takes time and experience. The joy of year one does not look like the joy of year ten or year twenty. It grows roots. It becomes more resilient. It holds up under heavier weight.

Should We Cancel Christmas When Things Are Hard

The talk opened with a playful skit where one speaker argued that Christmas should be cancelled because the year had been so dreadful. No celebrations. No tree. No Michael Buble. The response was gentle but firm: the circumstances of the first Christmas were arguably worse, and heaven still celebrated.

"This is a season where we can think of light and hope and joy. People over the years have tried to stop Christmas, tried to stop this kind of Christian celebration. They cannot. Because there is something like a momentum that just keeps going."

Oliver Cromwell managed to ban Christmas for three years. It came back. Every attempt to suppress it has failed, not because people are attached to the decorations and the carols, but because the story underneath them carries something that people need. Especially when times are hard.

The Deeper Current

Joy, as this talk presents it, is not the absence of pain. It is not forced cheerfulness or a refusal to acknowledge difficulty. It is something that runs beneath all of that, a deeper current that keeps flowing even when the surface is turbulent.

It is connected to knowing God. Connected to hope. Connected to the belief that this world, with all its suffering and uncertainty, is not the final word.

"Once you know God, once you have Jesus in your life, that does not mean your life is free from problems. We still have illnesses. We still lose people close to us. We still have financial problems and difficult times. But we have something that sustains us through that. And that is the difference."

What would it mean to stop chasing happiness and start cultivating joy instead?