[Note: This is Part 2 of our two-part series examining how we substitute our preferred version of Christmas for the actual Christmas God gave us.]

Every Christmas Day at 8 p.m., millions gather around their screens for the same ritual: the Call the Midwife Christmas special. The beloved BBC series, now in its fifteenth season, has become as much a part of British Christmas tradition as mince pies and carol singing. American audiences on PBS have adopted the tradition too.

This year’s special promises something the show markets explicitly: “nostalgia for 1970s Christmases.” The cast and creators have emphasized this throughout their promotional interviews—the special will be “full of nostalgia,” featuring “Christmas as we remember it,” complete with decorated tables, community gatherings, and the warm glow of simpler times.^[1]

It’s a brilliant marketing strategy. We love nostalgia at Christmas. We love the feeling of being transported back to when things were—or at least seemed—better. When families gathered without tension, when communities actually knew each other, when Christmas meant something more than frantic shopping and family obligation.

But here’s the uncomfortable question: What are we really pursuing when we chase nostalgic feelings at Christmas? Are we remembering Christ’s incarnation, or are we trying to recreate a feeling that may never have existed quite the way we remember it?

The Seduction of “The Better Days”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with Call the Midwife or nostalgic Christmas entertainment. The show is well-crafted, the stories are moving, and the period setting is beautifully rendered. It can be genuinely enjoyable.

But notice what the show is selling: not just entertainment, but feeling. “Nostalgia for 1970s Christmases.” The promise is that watching will transport you back—or let you experience for the first time—a Christmas that felt warmer, more meaningful, more real than whatever Christmas you’re actually living.

This is the seduction of nostalgia. It promises us access to “the better days”—a time when things were right in ways they aren’t right now. A time when Christmas was Christmas, when communities were communities, when life made sense in ways it doesn’t anymore.

We see this pattern everywhere at Christmas. We watch It’s a Wonderful Life and long for Bedford Falls. We listen to Bing Crosby and pine for white Christmases we’ve never actually experienced. We decorate with vintage ornaments and display Norman Rockwell prints. We’re not just remembering the past—we’re trying to resurrect it, to make it live again, to feel what we imagine people felt back then.

But what are we actually longing for? And what does that longing reveal about what we believe we need to be satisfied?

What Nostalgia Reveals About Our Hearts

Nostalgia isn’t neutral. It’s a form of selective memory that edits out the difficulties and highlights the comforts. When we long for “1970s Christmases” (or 1950s, or Victorian, or whatever era we’ve idealized), we’re not longing for the actual past. We’re longing for a curated version of the past that never quite existed.

The 1970s had racial tensions, economic uncertainty, the Vietnam War hangover, and plenty of broken families. Victorian England had crushing poverty, child labor, and class oppression that makes our current inequality look mild. The 1950s had segregation, Cold War anxiety, and plenty of dysfunctional families behind those white picket fences.

But nostalgia airbrushes all that out. It gives us the decorated Christmas tables without the family fights. The community gatherings without the gossip and exclusion. The “simpler times” without the very real complications that people actually faced.

When we pursue nostalgia at Christmas, we’re revealing something about our hearts: We believe that the right feelings, in the right setting, with the right atmosphere, will give us the satisfaction we’re missing in our actual lives.

This is a counterfeit gospel. It’s the belief that if we could just recreate the conditions of “better days”—or at least approximate the feeling through entertainment and decoration—we’d experience the peace, joy, and satisfaction we’re actually longing for.

The Idolatry of Comfort

Go deeper. Why do we want to feel what we imagine people felt in “better days”? Because we believe those feelings would make us comfortable. Nostalgia promises comfort—the sense that things are right, that we’re home, that we belong, that life makes sense in ways it doesn’t right now. It promises to protect us from the discomfort of our actual present: the family tensions we’re actually navigating, the cultural changes that unsettle us, the sense that something has been lost that we can’t quite name.

This is where nostalgia becomes functionally idolatrous. We’re trusting comfortable feelings to do what only God can do: give us peace, security, a sense that all is well, hope that life can be good. We’re organizing our Christmas celebrations around re-creating feelings rather than encountering the God who came to dwell among us.

Consider what this looks like practically. We get frustrated when Christmas doesn’t feel right—when the service is too contemporary, when the decorations aren’t traditional enough, when the music lacks the right nostalgia. We feel disappointed, even cheated, as if we’ve been promised something and it hasn’t been delivered.

That frustration reveals what we’re actually trusting. We’ve made comfortable, nostalgic feelings our functional savior at Christmas. We believe we need them to experience joy. And when we don’t get them, we feel robbed—not of truth, but of an emotional experience we’ve elevated to necessity.

The Myth of “Simpler Times”

There’s another lie embedded in Christmas nostalgia: the myth that things were simpler back then, and that simplicity is what we need.

Scripture speaks directly to this impulse: “Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this” (Eccl. 7:10). The Preacher identifies this question—”why were the old days better?”—not as innocent curiosity but as foolishness. It’s a question that betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of reality.

Every generation believes the previous one had it simpler. The Victorians thought medieval Christianity was purer. The 1950s idealized the frontier past. We idealize the 1950s. And our children will probably idealize our era once they’re dealing with their own cultural complexity.

But “simpler” is code for “more comfortable for people like us.” What we mean by “simpler times” is usually “a time when my tribe’s values were more dominant, when cultural norms aligned more with what I find comfortable, when I didn’t have to navigate as much complexity or encounter as many people who are different from me.”

This isn’t actually simpler. It’s just more comfortable for us specifically.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth: The incarnation wasn’t simple. God becoming flesh was the most complex, paradoxical, world-upending event in history. The Christmas story involves an unwed mother, a government census forcing travel, a birth in questionable circumstances, refugees fleeing violence, and God entering the world through the most vulnerable population imaginable.

There’s nothing simple about that. There’s nothing nostalgic or comfortable about it. The incarnation was disruptive, shocking, countercultural, and radically uncomfortable for nearly everyone involved.

When we make Christmas about recreating comfortable feelings from “simpler times,” we’re not honoring the incarnation. We’re domesticating it.

What We’re Really Longing For

But here’s the critical distinction: The longing itself isn’t wrong.

When we long for “better days,” we’re longing for something real—something we were made for. We long for community without division, for family without dysfunction, for peace without anxiety, for joy without the shadow of coming disappointment. We long for home in the deepest sense, for the sense that all is well and we’re where we belong.

These longings are legitimate. They’re echoes of Eden and foretastes of the new creation. The problem isn’t the longing. The problem is where we’re trying to satisfy it.

Nostalgia promises to satisfy these longings through recreated feelings. It says, “If you can just capture that Christmas magic, that warm glow, that sense of how things used to be, you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

But it can’t deliver. Feelings fade. Entertainment ends. The credits roll, the decorations come down, and we’re back in our actual lives with their actual complications. The nostalgic Christmas promised us Home, but it was only a temporary vacation from reality.

The incarnation offers something infinitely better: not a feeling to chase, but a person to know. Not a recreation of the past, but an actual future. Not comfort through nostalgic avoidance, but peace through present reality.

Christ Our Actual Home

Here’s what the gospel offers against our nostalgic idolatry: Christ himself is what we’re longing for when we long for home.

All those legitimate desires that nostalgia tries to satisfy—the longing for community, peace, belonging, joy, the sense that all is well—these are desires for God. They’re meant to drive us toward Him, not toward recreated feelings or idealized pasts.

When we long for “better days,” we’re tasting something true: life isn’t what it should be, and we know it. But the solution isn’t in the past. It’s in the person who entered history at Christmas to make all things new.

Jesus didn’t come to help us recreate comfortable feelings from bygone eras. He came to dwell among us in our actual mess, to meet us in our real present, and to give us genuine hope for an actual future. He came to be Emmanuel—God with us, not God nostalgically remembered from simpler times.

The peace He offers isn’t the peace of comfortable circumstances or nostalgic feelings. It’s the peace of knowing that the God of the universe has entered our chaos, taken on our flesh, borne our sin, and guaranteed our future. That’s not nostalgia—that’s hope.

When Nostalgia Functions as Grace

Does this mean nostalgia is always wrong? No. Like most counterfeits, it contains truth that’s been twisted.

Nostalgia can function as grace when it reminds us that we were made for something better. When it stirs longing that drives us to Christ rather than to recreated feelings. When it helps us remember God’s faithfulness in the past without trying to resurrect the past as our savior.

Call the Midwife, at its best, can do this. The show often depicts genuine community, authentic service, costly love—things worth remembering and pursuing. When it points us toward what’s actually valuable about human connection and sacrificial care, it serves us well.

But when we’re watching primarily to feel something—to recapture a Christmas magic, to escape our present reality, to experience the warm glow of “better days”—we’ve made the show serve our idolatry. We’re using nostalgia as a functional savior rather than letting it point us to the actual Savior.

The same is true of all our Christmas traditions, decorations, and entertainments. They can serve genuine worship, or they can become substitutes for it. They can point us to Christ, or they can become what we’re actually trusting to give us joy.

A Different Way to Experience Christmas

What would it look like to celebrate Christmas without making nostalgia our functional savior?

It would mean being present instead of trying to recreate the past. Instead of pursuing feelings we imagine people had in “better days,” we’d engage with the actual Christmas God gave us: Christ’s real incarnation, our real community (with all its messiness), our real family (with all its dysfunction), our real present (with all its complexity).

It would mean honest longing instead of selective memory. We’d acknowledge that we’re longing for home, for peace, for belonging—and we’d let that longing drive us to Christ instead of to nostalgic entertainment. We’d be honest that our pasts weren’t as golden as we remember and our presents aren’t as hopeless as they feel.

It would mean actual hope instead of temporary comfort. Instead of trying to resurrect feelings from bygone eras, we’d trust Christ’s promise that He’s making all things new. Not bringing back what was, but creating what’s never been—a new heaven and new earth where every legitimate longing finds its fulfillment.

Most radically, it would mean treasuring Christ more than treasuring the Christmas we’ve constructed. It would mean being willing to let our comfortable Christmas traditions be disrupted if they’re obscuring Christ. Being willing to experience Christmas differently than we’re used to if it means actually encountering the God who came at Christmas.

The Christmas That Remains

The incarnation hasn’t changed. God became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word who spoke creation into existence entered creation as a baby. The King of glory came in the most vulnerable, disruptive, uncomfortably real way imaginable.

That reality doesn’t depend on our feelings about it. It doesn’t require nostalgic atmosphere or recreated traditions. It doesn’t need “Christmas magic” to be true or powerful or transforming.

What has changed is our response to it. We’ve buried the shocking reality of incarnation under layers of sentiment, nostalgia, and comfortable tradition. We’ve turned the most disruptive event in history into an annual opportunity to feel warm feelings about “better days.”

But those warm feelings can’t save us. That Christmas magic can’t transform us. Those better days—even if we could resurrect them—can’t give us what we’re actually longing for.

Only Christ can do that. Only the God who entered our mess at the first Christmas can meet us in our mess this Christmas. Only the one who disrupted history can disrupt our comfortable idolatries and give us something infinitely better: Himself.

This Christmas, the question isn’t whether we can recreate nostalgic feelings or recapture Christmas past. The question is whether we’re willing to encounter the Christ who comes to us in our actual present, who meets us in our real lives, who offers us genuine hope instead of temporary comfort.

That’s the Christmas God gave us. And it’s better than any Christmas we could make for ourselves.

For Reflection:

• What era or version of Christmas do you find yourself longing for? What do you believe that idealized Christmas would give you that you’re missing now?
• When Christmas doesn’t “feel right,” what specifically are you missing? What does your disappointment reveal about what you believe you need to experience joy?
• How do you distinguish between healthy appreciation for tradition and using nostalgia as a functional savior?
• In what ways might your pursuit of “Christmas magic” or nostalgic feelings be protecting you from encountering the disruptive reality of the incarnation?
• What would it look like to treasure Christ more than treasuring your preferred version of Christmas—even if that meant experiencing Christmas in ways that feel unfamiliar or uncomfortable?

Prayer Points:

• For Honesty About Our Idolatry: Pray that God would expose the ways we’ve made comfortable feelings, nostalgic atmospheres, or “Christmas magic” our functional saviors. Ask for grace to see when we’re trusting recreated feelings rather than the reality of Christ’s incarnation, and for courage to repent of organizing Christmas around what makes us comfortable rather than around who God actually is.
• For Satisfaction in Christ Alone: Pray that the Spirit would awaken in us deeper desire for Christ than for any feeling, atmosphere, or tradition. Ask that our legitimate longings for home, peace, and belonging would drive us to Him rather than to nostalgic counterfeits, and that we would discover Him to be infinitely more satisfying than any Christmas we could construct for ourselves.
• For Present Grace Instead of Past Idealization: Pray for grace to live in our actual present rather than trying to resurrect idealized pasts. Ask that God would help us see His presence in our real lives, real families, real communities—with all their messiness and complexity—rather than escaping into selective memories or entertainment that promises feelings the incarnation never guaranteed.
• For Others Hurt by Nostalgic Exclusion: Pray for those who experience Christmas nostalgia as exclusion—people for whom “better days” meant discrimination, marginalization, or erasure. Ask that the church would celebrate Christmas in ways that welcome all whom Christ welcomes, rather than privileging one cultural tribe’s comfortable past as the norm for everyone. Pray too for wisdom to heed Scripture’s warning: “Say not, ‘Why were the former days better than these?’ For it is not from wisdom that you ask this” (Eccl. 7:10). Ask that God would free us from the foolishness of idealizing the past and give us eyes to see His work in our actual present.

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^[1]Laura Main, quoted in “‘Call the Midwife’ Cast & Creator Tease Dramatic Christmas 2025 Specials,” The Breeze JMU, September 12, 2025, https://www.breezejmu.org/culture/entertainment/call-the-midwife-cast-creator-tease-dramatic-christmas-2025-specials/article_0c7d8df3-e830-5a60-9ef7-b36fbccde2ae.html. See also “2025 ‘Call the Midwife’ Christmas Special: Everything You Need to Know,” TV Insider, November 17, 2025, https://www.tvinsider.com/1228391/2025-call-midwife-christmas-special-plot-cast-premiere-date-trailer-details/.