I was eating a piece of cheese the other night, late on in the kitchen, alone after clearing the Christmas decks.
Cheese is the thing that comes out when you know you’ve had enough but even so your eyes light up and before you know it you’re half a pound of stilton to the good and eyeing up a very runny Camembert.
My Christmas cheese was neither of those but an exceptionally unctuous and stinky Gorgonzola, on some seedy crackers. With butter. Of course, because what food is not enhanced by butter? No food. Because butter is perfect.
But if butter is the King of All Spreadable Dairy Products, then surely Gorgonzola is the opposite. It is mouldy and smelly. It looks like something you might scrape off something else to see if it could still be eaten. It is, frankly, off. And yet for all that it is rotten, it is miraculously rotten. It is excellent. It is irresistible and at Christmas it is inevitable.
Christmas draws us irresistibly and inevitably not only to cheese but to the same people every year. The same siblings, parents, grandparents and cousins, the same uncles and aunts, the same old friends. They shout and argue, they play the same games, make the same jokes, pursue the same pointless discussions. They are as familiar and predictable as Christmas dinner, and they can be as off-putting as the rankest piece of Gorgonzola.
Jesus’ friends, the people he chose to spend time with, travelled, talked, argued, ate and went to parties with, were much the same, an odd, ill-matched bunch of fishermen, tax collectors, relatives, politicians and religious radicals. They were loyal and brave, cowardly and obtuse. They were competitive and inconsiderate. They fell asleep on the job. They argued about who should sit where. But in spite of all, Jesus loved them.
So, as Christmas settles into the memory and the New Year looms, here’s to our own ill-matched bunch, our families and friends, the colleagues we return to, the neighbours who are still there the day after. Here’s to all of them in their glorious, annoying, stinky, delicious imperfection. Sometimes we think we’ve had enough of them and sometimes we imagine we don’t need them at all, but we love them anyway and somehow, amazingly, like cheese, there’s always room for just a little more.
Sara Cox is great.