A Challenge at Christmas – Rev Shona Shaw, St Hild Academic Tutor in Mirfield
When I was a child, our family’s Christmas preparation didn’t really start until Christmas Eve: no tree until 24th December, Christmas cards still being hand delivered and all day the kitchen a flurry of activity. You may think this was very late to get everything ready, but until then, my parents’ productivity and attention were focused on our church’s Christmas services.
At Christmas, like every other time of the year, the church always came first. Not that I minded on this occasion, for Christmas at church usually involved two of my great passions in life: singing and eating chocolate. Besides the usual carols by candlelight, my dad, a nurse, would take a small group of adults and children to sing carols around the residential care homes and local hospital wards. Although I found these unfamiliar places a bit strange as a child, I knew at the end of the singing I would be offered a chocolate from the large tin of Roses or Quality Street. And so, for me, the great Christmas tradition of carol singing and chocolate eating was initiated.
As I have got older, Christmas still allows me to indulge in my love of singing and chocolate, but the memories of carol singing bring me something else too: a challenge.
“Oh tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy” goes the well-known carol, God rest ye merry Gentlemen. I sang these words as a child, long before I even knew what they really meant. Whilst I now know the meaning of their archaic sense, I hear in them an invitation: the good news is to be shared, not kept for those who already know it. Among the familiar rituals and reassuring traditions, I am invited to go. To go beyond the edge of my comfort and my joy in Christ’s coming and share it with someone else.
I just hope I am not too busy or distracted to miss the invitation when it comes!