Picture from BBC website

8 p.m. and again at 11p.m. tomorrow night, the Liverpool Nativity on BBC 3.  I am looking forward to it, but with just the faintest hint of anxiety that after the wonderful Manchester passion this may not be so amazing.

I am looking forward to it, not least because by 11 p.m. I will be in a state of kn*ckeration after our evening outreach carol event - last head count on bookings was 183 and rising!  Indeed, as I blog I'm printing off yet more song sheets and wondering how to do 'loaves and fishes' on the tealight holders we decorated last week - l KNEW I should have gone to a college that taught elementary miracles.  Except of course they'd probably have been drummed out for wizardry and witchcraft...

I am looking forward to it because it sounds as if it will get to some of the guts of what gospel is - Good News for marginalised and unimportant people.  Making Jospeh into an asylum seeker might not be a one-for-one parallel with the biblical record, but it gets to the spirit of, if nothing else, parts of Matthew's account.

I've already heard a few, mainly secular, mumblings that this isn't a 'proper' nativity: no glitter, no Christmas card cleanliness.  But I think it is a fantastic experiment in... to pick up themes others are currently posting on... imagination, thought, hermeneutics, evangelism (which would shock Auntie Beeb, I'm sure!) and contextualisation.

So, no pressure then BBC, just make me proud of another of those wonderful northern cities...