How should Christmas feel?
Tinselly?
Sprucey?
Flashing lighty?
Carolly?
Even Richard Dawkins apparently enjoys singing Carols but as a FB friend of mine commented recently singing Carols is OK.
It's when you deconstruct the stories that the narrative collapses.
In my fifty odd years as a Vicar I have seen my main role as deconstructing the stories in order to rebuild them as believable narratives.
Of course the first story to be deconstructed is the story about Santa Claus.
You start believing as the gifts appear miraculously overnight, certainly in the days before Amazon, eBay, Yodel, Hermes and DPD, parcels did not appear moments after you had clicked a mouse or tapped a keyboard.
So Santa was a good bet.
Then one year as a young adult you wait all night and wake up with no presents and so you come to the sad conclusion that there is no Santa.
But then before you can sing Jingle Bells, having meanwhile married and begotten children, you realise that being Santa is now your responsibility, you have become Santa.
But there are Good Santa's and Bad Santa's, one year wrapping presents and filling pillow cases at two in the morning after Midnight Mass, the indoor critic and I put the wrong presents in the wrong sacks and spent the following morning correcting our mistakes with the words, what a Silly Santa .....
In Italy at Christmas one year we had a last minute shopping expedition to a special seasonal Christmas Market in order to be sure that we had local food for our visitors.
One stall was selling Salami.
We asked which was best, the stall holder held out a Salami saying Asino, uncertain for a moment as to the exact meaning and context of this reply, I pointed to the nearby scene of a Stable, a Manger complete with lowing animals and pointed to the affable looking Donkey in its straw filled pen?
Yes I was told, Asino.
And it was delicious and the grandchildren who hadn't quite worked out how Santa had followed them to Italy quickly cottoned on and asked for more Donkey Sausage without a qualm.
Early in my career as a young clergyman I was invited to take part in a Christmas Nativity to be put on by a local young wives group.
Everything went well until in the dress rehearsal Mary turned on Joseph and threw him out of the stable, throwing the baby after him and screaming in quite unseasonal language, 'and take your bloody baby with you!'
Clearly the couple had been at odds long before the narrative collapsed around them.
One year in my first parish I had spent some time working with a young musician who had used some of my lyrics to write songs, one of the songs he performed to which he had written his own lyrics was called Little Child, so I persuaded him that he might perform it at the Midnight Mass and I would preach on the lyrics of the song.
As the service was due to start at 11 30 pm there was no sign of the singer or his guitar, then the door burst open and in he fell, drunk!
It'll be fine Geoff, It'll be OK .....
I managed to get two burly sidemen to sit on him and deconstructed my way through my sermon without the musical accompaniment.
But music and Christmas goes together well, as Richard Dawkins alleged love of Carols suggests.
In my time in Newcastle which had begun with a headline in the local paper announcing, Pin back yer lug holes Tyneside, here comes the Revd Punk! I worked with a group of local musicians to put on a show in Church that we called 'Rocking the Cradle'.
On Christmas Eve before they closed I pinched all the decorations from Habitat and hung them in Church, big silver baubles, giant snowflakes and a Santa Claus.
The whole band was plugged via extension cables into one 13 amp socket, Mikes, Guitars, Drums, Vocals, Keyboard and lights.
After two hours the evening ended with John Lennon's Imagine and the stage lights went down and the Church Lights were switched on and I heard a wistful sigh from one of the congraudience.
'Oh! It's a boring old church again'.
Again the narrative was deconstructed.
From the Christmas card showing a radiant Mary announcing to a bewildered Joseph 'It's a Girl' to the jokes about wise men and their gifts and the difference if they had been wise women, the gifts would have been useful and they wouldn't have gotten lost on the way, Christmas needs to be deconstructed if only to remind us that this story of the Babe at Bethlehem is the story of the unconditional surrender of power and the triumph of the unconditional power of the story to change hearts and lives.
Tinselly?
Sprucey?
Flashing lighty?
Carolly?
Even Richard Dawkins apparently enjoys singing Carols but as a FB friend of mine commented recently singing Carols is OK.
It's when you deconstruct the stories that the narrative collapses.
In my fifty odd years as a Vicar I have seen my main role as deconstructing the stories in order to rebuild them as believable narratives.
Of course the first story to be deconstructed is the story about Santa Claus.
You start believing as the gifts appear miraculously overnight, certainly in the days before Amazon, eBay, Yodel, Hermes and DPD, parcels did not appear moments after you had clicked a mouse or tapped a keyboard.
So Santa was a good bet.
Then one year as a young adult you wait all night and wake up with no presents and so you come to the sad conclusion that there is no Santa.
But then before you can sing Jingle Bells, having meanwhile married and begotten children, you realise that being Santa is now your responsibility, you have become Santa.
But there are Good Santa's and Bad Santa's, one year wrapping presents and filling pillow cases at two in the morning after Midnight Mass, the indoor critic and I put the wrong presents in the wrong sacks and spent the following morning correcting our mistakes with the words, what a Silly Santa .....
In Italy at Christmas one year we had a last minute shopping expedition to a special seasonal Christmas Market in order to be sure that we had local food for our visitors.
One stall was selling Salami.
We asked which was best, the stall holder held out a Salami saying Asino, uncertain for a moment as to the exact meaning and context of this reply, I pointed to the nearby scene of a Stable, a Manger complete with lowing animals and pointed to the affable looking Donkey in its straw filled pen?
Yes I was told, Asino.
And it was delicious and the grandchildren who hadn't quite worked out how Santa had followed them to Italy quickly cottoned on and asked for more Donkey Sausage without a qualm.
Early in my career as a young clergyman I was invited to take part in a Christmas Nativity to be put on by a local young wives group.
Everything went well until in the dress rehearsal Mary turned on Joseph and threw him out of the stable, throwing the baby after him and screaming in quite unseasonal language, 'and take your bloody baby with you!'
Clearly the couple had been at odds long before the narrative collapsed around them.
One year in my first parish I had spent some time working with a young musician who had used some of my lyrics to write songs, one of the songs he performed to which he had written his own lyrics was called Little Child, so I persuaded him that he might perform it at the Midnight Mass and I would preach on the lyrics of the song.
As the service was due to start at 11 30 pm there was no sign of the singer or his guitar, then the door burst open and in he fell, drunk!
It'll be fine Geoff, It'll be OK .....
I managed to get two burly sidemen to sit on him and deconstructed my way through my sermon without the musical accompaniment.
But music and Christmas goes together well, as Richard Dawkins alleged love of Carols suggests.
In my time in Newcastle which had begun with a headline in the local paper announcing, Pin back yer lug holes Tyneside, here comes the Revd Punk! I worked with a group of local musicians to put on a show in Church that we called 'Rocking the Cradle'.
On Christmas Eve before they closed I pinched all the decorations from Habitat and hung them in Church, big silver baubles, giant snowflakes and a Santa Claus.
The whole band was plugged via extension cables into one 13 amp socket, Mikes, Guitars, Drums, Vocals, Keyboard and lights.
After two hours the evening ended with John Lennon's Imagine and the stage lights went down and the Church Lights were switched on and I heard a wistful sigh from one of the congraudience.
'Oh! It's a boring old church again'.
Again the narrative was deconstructed.
From the Christmas card showing a radiant Mary announcing to a bewildered Joseph 'It's a Girl' to the jokes about wise men and their gifts and the difference if they had been wise women, the gifts would have been useful and they wouldn't have gotten lost on the way, Christmas needs to be deconstructed if only to remind us that this story of the Babe at Bethlehem is the story of the unconditional surrender of power and the triumph of the unconditional power of the story to change hearts and lives.
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