Advent is a special time of year. I heard someone recently saying they liked the sense of melancholy waiting in the church year’s Advent as opposed to the somewhat frenetic Christmas commercial rush.
In New Zealand the Governor of the Reserve Bank has told New Zealanders to ‘cool the jets’ and save rather than spend this year. On the other hand the news programmes are showing us all the inventory which shops have in their warehouses, hinting a discounts in our future. What a confusing juxtaposition of circumstances. I don’t quite understand why the stores have so much inventory when we have been told all about supply shortages over the past few months, but that’s the mysteries of the market!
The paradox resonates with the paradox of the original Christmas story. Kings on thrones and unreliable smelly shepherds, Gentile astronomers and Galilean carpenters, virgins and mothers. Just the surprising juxtaposition tells you this is mythic, mystical country through which we are travelling.
In New Zealand, with everyone disappearing during January, both Advent and Christmas get packed together into the 4 weeks before Christmas Day. The traditional purely Advent carols seem too content-less and too full of waiting when we want to get on with it, in fact are forced to get on with it with Christmas themed break ups of every organization which which families are associated. One mother told me one year she had counted up. With two children involved in church school and sport, she was committed to take 13 plates of food over the last few weeks of term. She baked a huge batch of chocolate brownies, plated them. and simply took one out of the freezer for each event. Clever!
I wonder what Jesus or his parents would think if they saw what goes on each year. I watched a Hallmark card special last night and was struck by how nice everyone was, how important Christmas traditions were blown up to be and how much effort and time went in to making the festive time sparkle. In between, good things were done, a young salesman offered a promise of a more lucrative job, a sick young man given free medical treatment, a family brought food and presents when they could not afford them, a couple helped to re-unite, but the somewhat unrealistic glitz of it all left me longing for a good old family disagreement or an angry word to keep it real.
Christmas, real Christmas, is not all fun. I feel sorry for mothers and fathers when it is a dismal wet day and kids and relatives can’t get outside our nuclear-family sized houses. On the other hand, I am haunted by a cartoon I saw one year where a solitary person living alone gets very excited when a parcel arrives only to find it is a badminton set and he had no one to play with. Yet, having too many family members around reminds us why, indeed, we don’t live with each other all year round!
One year I was proud to be able to invite my mother and father to my home for the first time for Christmas till I saw Mum sitting with nothing to do while I buzzed about in a tizz trying to get everything done. Thank goodness I had bought peas in their pods that year so she was able to pod them while still sitting in our (relatively) comfortable arm chair.
The variety of us as a human race is vivid at Christmas, reflecting the variety of people written into the story of that birth of a baby boy to an artisan and his wife. May everyone find a welcome somewhere from somebody.
Everyone on this earth is covered by the sky
All humankind lives their life covered by the same canopy.
The rain falls on just and unjust
The sun shines on all colours and shades of people.
We are sisters and brothers and kin living together
on this sky-surrounded home
We are family, we are one.
Susan Jones 2022 Progressing the Journey
May you find what you need this Christmas – enough peace, enough serenity, enough joy, enough healing, just … enough….
Susan
jones.rs@xtra.co.nz
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