Santa V Jesus

I have been secret Santa-ed. It causes some concern as I never put my name down on the secret Santa list. It wasn’t anything anti-Santa, although I have deep seated Santa issues. The whole list was constructed on a google form. I never found my way on to it. My username and password didn’t grant me access to the list, and yes, I could have emailed or phoned and days went by and I did nothing. I felt stupid that I couldn’t get on to the google list. Yes, pride was involved. I skipped the part of the lunch where the maths teacher dressed up as Santa and invited the rest of them to sit on his lap. My present remained alone and unclaimed in the bottom of the box. I feel unsettled that someone out there should have had an answering secret Santa present and they don’t. There are other Mrs Kerr’s on the staff but it’s not a case of mistaken identity as the label clearly states Melanie.

Yesterdays’ newspaper, read over a bowl of porridge, contained two articles about Santa Claus.

The first was a very tongue-in-cheek thing. Apparently Santa Claus is not in good health and some of it is our fault and some of it is his. We are responsible for the weight problem by leaving out mince pies for Santa to eat as he stuffs our presents under the tree. He would, apparently, be better off eating Rudolph’s carrots and giving the mince pies to the reindeer.

His part of the health problems comes with the stress of delivering presents to everyone all over the world in one night. Maybe we could help by asking for fewer presents, or none at all.

The reindeer came in for some of the blame. Who was to know how many ticks and fleas they carried, some of which could skip from hide to beard and cause distress. Of course, if he didn’t have the reindeer at all, Santa could do a lot more running from house to house and climbing on to roofs to get to chimneys. He would be that more fitter, that more streamlined.

All of this was said by a dose of doctors who ought not to have that much time on their hands for such frivolity.

The second article was written by an atheist who felt the need to justify celebrating Christmas without the Jesus content of it. She talked of church attendance when she was young and going through all the rituals of growing up, but always feeling that it was done for her parents rather than herself. She felt that everything about Jesus didn’t make sense. Christmas for her was all about family and present giving, for trees and tinsel and something good to break up the winter darkness.

She ended her article with the sentiment that it would be nice to go outside and look up. I thought she was going to say something about looking out for a really bright star – that somewhere still deep inside was a longing for the Jesus part of Christmas to be true. Not at all – she would be looking for a glimpse of Santa’s sleigh.

Something in me mourned the apparent loss of Jesus in the Christmas celebrations. What Satan couldn’t do by sending Herod into Bethlehem to slaughter the babies, he has found a neater way by replacing Jesus with Santa – so much more appealing. Santa with his nice and naughty list doesn’t make a permanent change in anyone’s life.

I confess that I have never been a fan of Santa. I see beyond the “Ho! Ho! Ho!” to a very unfair gift giver! It still rankles that good behaviour really doesn’t have a say in what goodies he leaves. It is all about how what parents can afford. I grew up in a one parent household with six children. She wasn’t irresponsible to have such a large clutch – just a good Roman Catholic and with a husband that would have looked after us all well had he not died young. It really didn’t matter how good I behaved, I was never going to get a bike. Other children grew up with both parents and the 2.4 average children. Bikes were no problem.

So, yes, Santa and I have never been on good terms. Had my family been born a little later into the pay-day loan era, who knows what kind of debt my mum might have got into to provide the bike simply to keep up with the neighbours. My Santa grudge goes deep! He is not harmless fun, not in my book.

“Santa will never topple Jesus from His throne,” said God as we sat reading poetry together over a cup of tea. “People might look at the tinsel and the trees and feel they have something to celebrate but all too soon the Easter eggs will be out in the shops. Christmas will be done and dusted and everything put away. Jesus – you can’t put Him away and move on. He insists that He walk with you through every day of the coming year.”

Advent Poems

At the end of my summer holidays I spent a week with a friend in Armadale on Skye.  It was just the two of us with a plan to write. We both had books half written and thought to make some progress. Mine was a second poetry book.  I thought the first poetry book published a couple of years ago was so good that perhaps I didn’t have a second book in me so I had been putting it off and putting it off. In the process of helping my friend organise her material – absorbing stuff about Scottish clans – I took a fresh look at the second book and began to see what poetry I already had and what poems I needed to write new.  The first book had an Easter section and the plan was for this new book to have a Christmas section. Trouble was I didn’t have that many Christmas poems and the ones I had were all very alike – nativity scenes really – different words, different rhyming schemes, different rhythms but same poem.  Maybe I should just abandon Christmas – don’t we all feel like that sometimes?

Advent arrived. I had signed up for email devotionals, bought a study book and found a sheet of Christmas themed Bible verses to write out each day – the usual overdosing.

It came to me that I might want to use the advent devotionals and/or the study book and/or the Bible verses I was writing out daily to use as poetry prompts.  I figured that by Christmas and up to the end of December I would have a whole pile of poems to add to the Christmas section of the new book.

Seriously? Have I had fun? Absolutely!

Some poems are book-definites, others need a bit of polishing up to hit the mark, some will never make it and one or two are rather quirky but I love them.  I am four prompts behind schedule.  My brain tells me it’s OK to write a bad poem to fill the space or just two lines that rhyme.  Not every poem has to be brilliant. The writer in me objects strongly and insists on a good poem!

It’s the reading up that I’ve enjoyed the most.  Reading up about Herod, or the star, or the magi has given me a different perspective of Christmas.  I have always known stuff but it feels like I am on my own little journey, seeing aspects of the Christmas story from all the different characters involved.  In trying to find their heart I have found interesting bits of my own.

Yesterday’s poem was all about Joseph.  I was reading articles about the role of men at the birth and whether they had any real role to play at all.  Gone are the days of walking up and down the corridor outside the maternity suite in the hospital.  They are there holding their wife’s hand – but do they need to be?  Apparently, yes. Bonding matters to fathers just as much as it does to mothers.

I read the things that men had written about holding the baby minutes after the birth, even before the baby is cleaned and wrapped in a blanket. They are in awe of this little life they hold who wield such power over them.

I admit to a real surge of jealousy, almost anger that I had been denied that experience.  There are times when childlessness bites deep and the wound never really goes away.  I felt angry that my husband never had that experience either. He would have been a great dad.  Some little child would have had absolute power over him.  I would have been relegated to the role of bad cop.

I thought of Joseph holding Jesus and searching his tiny face for signs of himself even though he knew he wouldn’t find any – the set of the chin or the shape of the ear.  Of course, Joseph was the biological father.  God chose so wisely when he chose not just Mary, but Joseph too.  In his later life when Jesus talked of God as Father – it was Joseph that had taught him all he knew about fathers and Joseph had done a good job.

There may not have been any DNA of Joseph’s floating about in Jesus – but Joseph had built himself into Jesus through the words he spoke, the compassion he showed, his gentle patience as a carpenter and his love of God and His word.  God himself couldn’t father Jesus in his humanity but He found someone who could. 

Joseph’s Son

I marvel at Your tiny form

Cradled here, so soft and warm

I breathe Your fragrance, hold You near

And tremble with an awesome fear

I cannot help but look to see

If in You there’s a trace of me

Of form and frame there’s nought we share

Yet God has placed You in my care

My boy to nurture and to grow

But You…God’s Son…I just don’t know

A task so big, I dread to fail

But God so close, I will prevail

I see the grain in lengths of wood

In You I’ll shape what’s kind and good

And then one day, I’ll glance and see

In You there’ll be that trace of me