Most sensible people take a week or two out from blogging to eat, drink and be merry.  The rest of us blog on regardless reflecting and rambling about our experiences of this bizarre yet signficiant festival, trying to find glimpses of God hidden in the glitz and glamour.  (In case you'd ever wondered I like aliteration, even if I'm not sure how to spell it!).

Christingle Lights - I had the task of giving the talk and used parts of John 1 and Matthew 5 to pick up the twin themes of both Jesus and people as light for the world.  Using a range of light sources - a birthday cake candle, a desk lamp, a normal torch, a search-light type torch and a string of coloured fairy lights, we thought how lights come in different shapes and sizes, each with a special role and all important.  I ended with the fairy lights, all attached to a single cord and sourced from a single power supply (these were the cheap, non-flashing type so all connected in series) and decided to have a quick Christian unity plug (pardon the pun) pointing out that the colours may differ but they are united by the common power supply.  It seemed to work - and switching on the lights drew a gasp of wonder from the congregation.  My former Church of South India Mehtodist colleague hasn't stopped grinning since!

Christmas Eve Communion - Baptist style.  We met in the home of one of our members.  She and her husband store much of our funiture in their shed and to my dismay had brought in the communion table and the preacher's chair.  However, the initial sadness at the straight rows of dining chairs, all very ecclesiatical, melted away as people arrived and we had to bring in garden chairs and the rows degenerated into a crush, with one person even sat on the stairs.  Recorded music by Rutter and from Taize, a liturgy adapted from one written by a college colleague and a Nick Fawcett meditation preceded the sharing of warm, home-baked bread and proper sized glasses of grape juice.  Over mince pies and coffee hung a strange warmth as we chatted freely and found Christ in the clutter.

High Anglicanism at midnight.  My one self-indulgence after our services have ended is to go somewhere else for midnight communion.  This year I trotted off to the very high Anglicans (rather than the just high Anglicans!) where I joined around twenty people for a traditional midnight mass.  It was all very un-pass-remarkable until the moment when I found myself kneeling in front of the large scale nativity scene set out literally under the altar.  Crunching up a wafer (bad heretic that I am) whilst looking into the eyes of an infant Christ was a very moving experience, inextricably connecting the two events of Christmas and Easter in a way that doesn't happen when we just stand our neat little nativity scene on the Communion Table the weeks we don't need it for its designated purpose.

Village Celebration Service.  This had turned into a nightmare in the planning.  The host church was split over whether it was a 'village service' or their service to which we were coming.  One minister and the preacher had found strange common ground in objecting to the drama the rest of us had agreed upon.  The leader only finally decided who was doing what at 9 pm Christmas Eve and reallocated us all to new roles...  It could have been a disaster with break down of relations a real possibility.  The moment arrived, the church was pretty well full with people from all the local churches plus a few from another church not holding a service (shame on you XYZ Baptist Church) and some 'Christmas Oncers.'  And it worked!  It was a good atmosphere, the singing was good, the simple prayers said all that was needed and the "birth pains" indeed forgotten as we celebrated the crazyness of God all those years ago.

Yes, Christmas was pretty much crackers, but instead of paper crowns, useless toys and awful jokes, were a few new insights, some precious moments and hope for the future.  Somewhere in the heavens I'm sure there were a few smiles as the squabbles were laid aside if only for a few moments this Christmas-tide.

Phew, it's the morning after the night before!  All the hours of planning, buying, making, and in my case coordinating and acting as the local 'United Nations' between chair shifters and room decorators, have paid off, we had a great event and attracted four times our normal congregation!

The Community Centre was transformed with a 'Christmas Eve house' scene, nativity artwork borrowed from local primary schools, some fairy lights and yards & yards of tinsel.  With fifteen minutes to spare, we finally got the data projector and laptop speaking to each other (the in-joke and answer to everything at the moment is 'F5').  It all went remarkably well.  I don't think any of us were to sure how it would 'feel' with a radio broadcast especially as this is such a visual age - hence the data projector to give something to look at!  But somehow it all worked, and people entered into the service and enjoyed it.

It was well worth the effort and engaged over half our membership in some apsect of the preparation and delivery.  Perhaps the proof of how it went was this morning's email from one deacon saying 'when's the next community service?"

There are lots of lessons to be learned from the experience, lots of minor issues to address (including my need for a blue hard hat!) but there was a real sense of joy in it all and that God is moving us on to new and exciting things.

Now then... back to putting away four extension leads, three sets of fairy lights, a bag or three of marshmallows and then a relaxing skinny fairtrade latte before I start on the Christingle talk! 

This little poem was read over the phone to me by a friend in Warrington.  I then found it on the warrington-worldwide website.  Author unknown so alas cannot be acknowledged.  Enjoy!

Another Day...

It's another day in the stable,
Mary is picking her nose.
The angel's got impetigo,
It would seem that anything goes.

It's another day in the stable,
The donkey is having a scratch
His eczema's all irritated,
It's nothing the baby could catch.

Just another day in the stable,
Joseph's refusing to dress,
Unless he can turn out as Batman
We'll be under considerable stress.

Yet another day in the stable,
The shepherds are pulling their tongues.
I swear the baby doll winked at me -
Oh, I've been doing this job for too long.

A further day in the stable,
The spider's gone down with the 'flu,
We're a wise man short for the tableau,
Whatever are we going to do?

It's the penultimate day in the stable,
And not long before we sing,
Sophie the star has hysterics
And has twinkled on everything.

It's Christmas day in the stable,
And it's such a beautiful sight.
Jesus is here once again to show
It'll be all right on the night.

This was sent to me by one of my church members.  Enjoy or ignore, but please don't take offence!

There's this bird called Mary, yeah?  She's a virgin (wossat then?)

She's not married or nuffink, but she's got this boyfriend, Joe, innit? He does joinery an' that.  Mary lives with him in a crib dahn Nazaref.

One day Mary meets this bloke Gabriel.  She's like `Oo ya lookin at?'  Gabriel just goes 'You got one up the duff, you have.'  Mary's totally gobsmacked.  She gives it to him large 'Stop dissin' me yeah?  I  ain't no Kappa-slapper.  I never bin wiv no one!'

So Mary goes and sees her cousin Liz, who's six months gone herself.  Liz is largin' it.  She's filled with spirits, Barcardi Breezers an' that.

She's like 'Orright, Mary, I can feel me bay-bee in me tummy and I reckon I'm well blessed.  Think of all the extra benefits an' that we are gonna get.'  Mary goes 'Yeah, s'pose you're right'

Mary an' Joe ain't got no money so they have to ponse a donkey, an' go dahn Bethlehem on that.  They get to this pub an' Mary wants to stop, yeah?  To have her bay-bee an' that.

But there ain't no room at the inn, innit?  So Mary an' Joe break an' enter into this garridge, only it's filled wiv animals.  Cahs an' sheep an' that.

Then these three geezers turn up, looking proper bling, wiv crowns on their heads.  They're like `Respect, bay-bee Jesus', an' say they're wise men from the East End.

Joe goes: 'If you're so wise, wotchoo doin' wiv this Frankenstein an' myrrh?  Why dincha just bring gold, Adidas and Burberry?'  It's all about to kick off when Gabriel turns up again an' sez he's got another message from this Lord geezer.

He's like 'The police is comin an' they're killin all the bay-bees.  You better nash off to Egypt.'  Joe goes 'You must be monged if you think I'm goin' dahn Egypt on a minging donkey'

Gabriel sez 'Suit yerself, pal.  But it's your look out if you stay.'  So they go dahn Egypt till they've stopped killin the first-born an' it's safe an' that.

Then Joe and Mary and Jesus go back to Nazaref, an' Jesus turns water into Stella.

Recently I was chatting with a minister friend about preparations for Christmas.  She commented on how she had tried to challenge the sanitised view of Christmas of her folk by arranging to hold a service in a barn.  I replied that I had attempted something similar in our newsletter, including pointing out that the innkeeper does not actually appear in the Bible.  She was shocked, surely I was wrong!  Even if he wasn’t there, surely he and his harsh words were clearly implied.  I am not convinced.  We then got into a discussion about Midrash (a concept I’ve never really got to grips with) and tradition and their benefits and weaknesses.

Mr Mean Innkeeper does not appear in Luke, in fact neither does a stable, an ox, ass, lamb or a glittery roof; all that is recorded is “she gave birth to her firstborn wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.” 

Notwithstanding the truths contained in the “traditional” version of the story, I wondered what the mythical innkeeper might want to say about what really happened that night.  No doubt this is not original and many good creative writers have already done this, but here’s my attempt.

“You don’t know my name, nor anything about me, but I get the impression you’d probably call me Mike (Mean Inn KEeper) given that the first words you put in my mouth are ‘no room,’ and I try to close the door on a heavily pregnant teenager and her gentle, older-man, partner.  It’d be nice to have the chance to give you my version…

Bethlehem was heaving, and I mean heaving, every day.  Couples, families, men on their own, old, young, serious, laughing, moaning, healthy, sick… you name it, they came piling in.  We worked our sandals off (socks, you will recall, had not been invented) just to keep up with it all.  But we coped, and somehow, despite it all, I kept my cool.

It wasn’t easy – all those Roman Health and Safety Rules to comply with, Kosher food only (you always assumed I was a Jewish innkeeper didn’t you?), endless hard work.  And every night all the inns (how ever many you think there were) full to bursting and countless bodies curled up in doorways, under trees, along the roadside.  We packed in as many as we could, but there were always far more.

So the fateful night came. I was walking through the market when I saw them.  Her already in the early stage of labour, him trying to help, looking for a tree to provide shelter.  I felt for them, went to see if they were alright – did they have far to go back to their family home?  They turned out to be visitors, caught out by her confinement, frightened and alone.  So what else could I do?  I took them home with me. 

The lower part of the house – what you call a stable – was empty, the sheep were out on the hillside (haven’t you ever read the rest of the story?!), swept clean and already had seen several overnight guests that week.  I settled them in and waited for the ear-splitting cry that would announce a baby’s arrival.

I feared for his safety, this tiny scrap of humanity, in an inn overflowing with tired, often irritable, travellers, so I suggested they place him in the food trough away from trampling feet and heavy packs.  There was no room in my inn, the storyteller is right, and she did lay him in the manger.

But was Mike the Mean Innkeeper?  Was it Mike or Michelle?  Was I Jew or gentile?  Kind or cruel?  Young or old?  You have to decide for yourselves.”

~”~

Another thought occurred to me while writing this – there is nothing to say where the manger was, presumably it could have been out in the open and not in a ‘stable’ at all?  Part of the wonder of the birth narratives is not how much, but how little, they actually say.  Whilst clever scholars discuss myth and Midrash, wide-eyed children retell the story of the Mean Innkeeper, and the ubiquitous ox and ass look on lovingly at a baby who never cries, I continue to marvel at the new discoveries waiting for us when we start to read what the Bible actually says.  Mike the Innkeeper is a figment of my imagination but maybe he, too, has his place in the mystery and magic of Christmas?