Hillside Parishes Magazine
Hillside Parish MagazineDecember 2010From the Vicar - December 2010 Keeping Christmas by Eleanor Farjeon (Author of the hymn “Morning has broken”)
How will you your Christmas keep? Feasting, fasting, or asleep? Will you laugh or will you pray, Or will you forget the day?
Be it kept with joy or prayer, Keep of either some to spare; Whatsoever brings the day, Do not keep but give away.
At this time of year I always remember that Morecambe and Wise joke “Why do they always have Christmas when the shops are so busy?”. It’s less obvious in the villages, but as soon as you go into Thirsk or Northallerton you can feel the pace of Christmas increasing; and in the cities it’s full speed ahead now; even in mid October I was caught out when I went late night shopping at the Meadowhall Centre in Sheffield and I found myself right in the middle of the Christmas rush. I should have known better! So what is it with Christmas, that so many of us seem to go a little mad and follow the urge to consume and acquire as much as we can for our nearest and dearest? Especially when one of the effects of all that activity is to distract us from the stable in Bethlehem and the song of the angels. (The most conservative estimate of our national high street Christmas spending last year was around fifteen billion pounds. But just one-tenth of this amount (i.e. £1.5bn) is the sum currently estimated by the UN as being necessary for ongoing emergency flood relief in Pakistan.) If I believed in the Devil (and I’m not saying that I don’t!) he couldn’t have come up with a better way than this of diverting our attention from the true meaning of Christmas. When we are so busy with our own concerns we quickly lose sight of the message which the Prince of Peace brings, “What ever you do for the least of these you do for me” – and thus the real significance of Christmas presents. Once again, this year Christian Aid is urging us to “give something unexpected” to family and friends, something which will help to transform the lives of people living in the world’s poorest communities. Among the gifts in their catalogue are watering cans for market gardeners in Mali (£10 each), worms for India (£7 a wormery), goats for Burundi (£15 each or £60 a herd) and ducks for Bangladesh (excellent value at £25 for 16) and the friend “receiving” the gift will be sent a card with details of their present and who it will benefit. Just one way to share the spirit of Christmas in a slightly different way. Strangely, we will find that the more we give at Christmas, the more space we create inside ourselves for God (sometimes we know this already); and the increased peace within that space will help us to keep the busy-ness in proportion. And if we approach that space very quietly, perhaps like a little child, then we might – just – hear those angels singing … With my prayers Ian Houghton
The magazine of the parishes of Cowesby, Felixkirk with Boltby (including Thirlby & Sutton-under-Whitestonecliffe), Kirby Knowle (including Upsall), and Leake with Over and Nether Silton and Kepwick (including Knayton & Borrowby) which are all part of the Hillside and Osmotherley parishes in the Deanery of Mowbray. |
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