A Flight of Fancy for Friday - The 12th Day Of Christmas 2024

River Red Gums, Flinders Ranges National Park, South Australia. 2007

(Photo krb)

Today we end our Christmas journey for another year. The short season of Christmas has come to an end and tomorrow we enter the season of Epiphany. Tomorrow is the day to take down your Christmas decorations and the tree unless, of course, you have already done it. If it was a natural tree perhaps it will become compost in the garden and if it isn't then the task will be to close the branches and try to enclose it in its box. Ours seems to expand with each year. 

I heard, in the period shortly before Christmas the comment, 'I am not ready for Christmas' or 'I have not felt the spirit of Christmas so much this year,' much more often. Our societies attitude to and celebration of Christmas is changing. It has become much more a secular festival, the celebration of which gravitates around families. It is less a religious festival. It is like the church has decided to play down Christmas, to hand it over to the secular and commercial world. It is much easier to take the community on a journey through Advent than to deal effectively with the mythical nature of the Christmas story. It is a lot of work to deal well with Christmas and there is less and less reward for the effort.

But the myths at the basis of the Christmas story are important. They help us to discover our identity and they certainly draw us together as a community. Myth is important to us so long as we don't allow it to become dogma. The great myth that comes through the Christmas story is that God's preference is with the poor and the outcast, the nobodies of our world, not with the rich and the powerful. That myth tells us much about who we are as Christians and who we must be in our relationship with God and the world. It is a hard lesson for the institutional church to promote. Maybe it is just a little too hot to handle.

Every blessing as you continue on your journey. May God bless you and be your companion on the way. Pleases get in touch with me any time to say g'day.  

peace, justice and blessings to all.