There's something to it, the Advent adventure. Its allure transcends and moves us beyond the corny. The sentimental. When we wade our way through the tinsel, the lights and jolly holly, we find there's a deep, sweet magic to the season.
Life is no cushioned pleasure cruise for most of us. No-one gets through unbloodied. As our years pass us by, we experience all the usual dramas, interpersonal spats, crises, uncertainties and stresses. And yet, every December I find myself grinning inanely, my spirits bolstered by the season.
I’m conscious that many of us have our own reasons to shun Christmas, whether it is financial and familial pressures, abhorrence of commercialism, anniversaries of grief and loss, divorce, depression, despair, concerns about the exclusion of those who don’t observe the notion of a God incarnated into a baby.There are parallel (and I believe complimentary) observances for peoples of other cultures. Festivals of light, celebrations of other venerable faiths, and of no faith. To my fellow humans of a non-Christmas bent I say, ‘Good stuff, good on you, have fun!’For me, Yuletide is that great leveller. It is a pressure valve released; a genuine laugh guffawed right in the face of death, fear and hatred. New life, noted, celebrated and championed.
That championing of life is best expressed, for me, through music. I re-live childhood and more recent memories of playing carols in the best of oompa pa traditions. Of singing with my brothers and sister, my parents and relatives.
'For me, Yuletide is that great leveller. It is a pressure valve released; a genuine laugh guffawed right in the face of death, fear and hatred. New life, noted, celebrated and championed.'
A favourite Australian carol by John Wheeler (words) and William James (music) conjures images of the north wind tossing the leaves, with red dust over the town; sparrows under eaves and brown grass in paddocks salute ‘the Christ-child, the heavenly King’.
I cry fondly at memories of my late Mum, singing Away in a Manger to Luther’s Cradle Hymn.
More than any other holiday, Christmas is the time we remember. I think of mistletoe; of lovers and loved ones past and present. I thank God for my wife and our kids, with whom we have done our best to share life and hope and laughter.
Saint Nicholas is reputed to be quite the list keeper. That master of surveillance, that jovial voyeur, has nothing on us, when