1 December 2009 No Comment

This is not quite a ‘bah humbug’ post, on the grounds that that has been done and it is an easy thing to do. Also, I could ‘bah humbug’ for Britain and I started blogging not just to whinge but to try and work out where God was in all this mess (my head, my life etc). If you want to check out the reasons, I put them here:- http://diggingalot.blogspot.com/2008/06/i-will-call-this-one-my-second-post.html.

I went to a Christmas fayre at the weekend in a small Methodist Church. It was like how Christmas Fayres used to be 30 years ago and all the better for it; people came to talk to each other as if it was the main point of being there, home baking, small gifts, an absence of garish gifts and plastic etc etc and…Father Christmas……

…Father Christmas like he used to be…. a man in a costume with a cotton wool beard and someone who spent time talking to kids and not just ‘Let me extort money out of you; here is your present, ‘next’…

I set there in his grotto (small back room, last decorated in 1736, but cosy and full of wonder) and watched and listened. It was almost like a child’s entry into the presence of a god…awestruck silence, gradual speech…appreciating you (‘what school do you go to?’, ‘what do you like?’), followed by confession (have you been good?’), exhortation (‘work hard at school’?) and then intercession (what would you like for Christmas?).

Slightly disturbed already by a 5 year old’s grasp of branding but more than full of joy at their simple pleasure at a small gift and meeting santa (which is, by the way, an anagram of ’satan’…but I don’t tell them that) and their sense of wonder.

At one point I did wonder about colluding with the tale of santa but I remembered my own childhood- we all knew he wasn’t there or real (I’m sorry in advance for those who still believe) but it was one of the rituals that was part of Christmas and we loved the pretending. Part of me reacts, too, over the joyless, suck cheeks in in disapproval, of part of my Christian tradition at anything that seems fun.

Only disappointment..Father Christmas had no attractive fairies with him…