Christmas a Time For-Giving and For-Getting

We are now fully into the Advent Season, the days that lead to Christmas Day. These are the days of waiting of preparation. The music is playing, we can hear all the familiar songs in every shop as we no doubt begin the process of selecting presents for our loved ones.

Have you done all your shopping yet? I’ve not even begun. I will get round to it, but not just yet. I’ve got too much to do. The cards are coming. Actually, I received my first Christmas card in July. It was left with another card for a friend and a gift for him. It was a mutual friend who was in the country for a short while and wanted to say a thank to me and more importantly a mutual friend. A lovely, if little unconventional, gesture.

I also received an unusual request too. I was rung up by someone who occasional attends things at Dunham Road. She asked me if the Christmas Eve service was going to be on Christmas Eve. I wasn’t entirely sure how to answer the question. She told me she was going away that evening and would like to come, but not if the Christmas Eve service was on on Christmas Eve. I told her of other services, but explained that the Christmas Eve service was to held on Christmas Eve.

People can be some wonderfully interesting.

Have you experienced any “Bah Humbug” moments yet? I have had one or two, mostly whilst struck in traffic and wondering if I can get all the things done, I need to do. I seem ever more busy this year. I have already had to cancel a few things. There have been lovely gifts too, mainly gifts of presence and conversation. The most touching and beautiful was during last Sunday’s candlelight service at Dunham Road. Margaret and her son and his partner Sil sitting there in the hospice watching the candles in the dark and silence. It was the beautiful image of her face, the smile as took in the beautiful spirit in the air, alive there and then. It was Margaret’s final service as sadly she died this week. I missed her by half an hour as I was driving in the pouring rain, stuck in traffic, trying to get to the hospice to see her one last times. She died half an hour before I arrived. People tried to call my, but my phone was on do not disturb. I arrived to be told the sad news. I left and wept and then got myself together before going to see her son Peter.

There have been so many tender moments already this Advent seasons, so many beautiful giving of the heart. “What shall I give him, give my heart.” There have been other moments of loving generosity, moments of tears and joy and laughter too. I have recently discovered that “All I Want for Christmas is You” by Maraih Carey shares the same meter as “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”. I decided to record it as a voice message and send it to friends as a way of sharing some joy, mirth and merriment, a gift for folk I know. I will no doubt be singing it again.

Just my way of giving something I have from my heart. By the way if you want to hear a version please click on the video devotion at the bottom of this "Blogspot"

The following were the last few words from the opening prayer last Sunday, by Victoria Safford?

Now is the moment of magic,

and here's a blessing:
we already possess all the gifts we need;
we've already received our presents:
ears to hear music,
eyes to behold lights,
hands to build true peace on earth
and to hold each other tight in love.

I have felt these gifts alive and well these last few days, I have felt the spirit at the heart of them moving too. I have made some use of them as I have gone about my work these last few days and I have felt the love of others too, mixed in with the odd “Bah Humbug”

How do we make good use of the gifts we have been given from the beginning and throughout our lives? How do we bring these gifts to life in this beautiful present that is right here, right now? How do we make best use of the gift of life?

I will leave that one with you to ponder…

For most of us Christmas is about the giving and receiving of presents, but not necessarily about the gifts we both give and receive. It is not just wanton materialism of “Black Friday” or some of the excesses of the coming days. There is a greater gift at the heart of this, in this time for giving and for getting, or forgiving and forgetting, however you understand it.

The giving and receiving of gifts is at the heart of Christmas. I suspect that the tradition of giving and receiving gifts at Christmas time is linked to the three gifts of the Magi “Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh”. Gifts of great value 2,000 years ago, although only gold has retained its worth today. Now in early Christianity the journey of the Magi was celebrated on the Feast of the Epiphany on the 6th of January, the 12th day of Christmas, hence the Carol “On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a partridge in a pear tree”…etc...). Interesting this is when Christmas is celebrated in the Eastern, the Orthodox Church, on the 12th night.


The early Christian church did not celebrate Christmas as we do today. The tradition of giving Christmas presents is really a modern one. By Victorian times the culture of gift giving and the mythos of Father Christmas, St Nicholas or Santa Claus was beginning to take hold, immortalised in the fiction of Dickens and the like. As the twentieth century moved on into the twenty first this culture developed into mass consumerism. Today it would seem that buying, wrapping and giving gifts has become nothing more than a mechanical chore and one of the worst examples of mass consumerism going. Is this really what Christmas is about? Is this really giving by heart? Is this really the spirit of Christmas? Well it can be if we select, give and receive these gifts in the spirit of love. In so doing we bring the spirit of season alive, by incarnating the words from my favourite Carol “In the Bleak mid-winter”…

This takes me back to that gift selected and wrapped and delivered back in July, a little offering of thanks for a friend.

“What shall I give him? Give my heart”

I believe that the true spirit of Christmas is the heart, that this is the gift of the season. Christmas above everything else truly is the season of the heart. When we truly give our gifts to others we are giving them our hearts and when we truly give from our heart to another we are somehow bringing that heart of God alive and that spirit is once again incarnating in life.

This is the religion, the spirit that can still be discovered beneath the ribbons and the wrapping paper. This is the spirit that can once again come alive if we engage in the giving and receiving of gifts and not merely presents. This is one way in which we can truly begin to become a gift to the world. Something to think about this season, what can you give of your heart, from your heart, where it is needed.

It is amazing what can emerge from folk if we would but encourage and nurture it.

I remember being told a story of how the Onondaga people would teach their children about generosity. The Onondaga were one of five original Iroquois found in present day New York state south of Lake Ontorio. It seems that when it was time to teach a child the tribe would gather together in a circle and the child would be brought to the centre of that circle and given wonderful things to drink. After the child had drunk to their hearts content. A voice would cry out from outside the circle saying, 'I'm thirsty, I'm thirsty.' The child would then be encouraged to take the drink to the thirsty person. The child would then be brought back into the circle and fed the most wonderful feast of food. They would then hear a voice from outside the circle, crying out, 'I'm hungry, I'm hungry.' Again, the child would leave the circle to feed the hungry person. The child would then be brought back to the circle and be given the most exotic and beautiful, warm clothes to wear. Then a voice would again cry out, crying, 'I'm cold, I'm cold.” The child would then gather up clothes and help dress the freezing person.

Reminds of the words of Jesus “What you do to the least them, you do to me.”

What a beautiful way to teach empathy and interconnection and community. It speaks powerfully to me to what is at the heart of Christmas; it speaks powerfully to me of what are the gifts at the heart of Christmas.

I have been thinking a lot of ministry and my journey into ministry of late. I was asked again recently what drew me, what called me into ministry. It was of course heartache and grief. That said it was more than that it was also gifts of generosity and love, which began as I have said many times before, with a gift of soup and loving kindness. Folk giving from their heart in a time of broken despair. I carry that loving spirit and generosity with me. I have been given many free gifts and meals throughout my life. There are many graces in life.

As I was driving home from the hospice the other evening, in tears of grief I was listening to the radio, ”The Lamb” by John Tavener began to played. This was a piece of music I was learning to sing in a choir at the time that Ethan was killed in the autumn of 2006. That Advent we sang it for the first time and dedicated it to his precious little life. Ethan was my Immanuel, the one who showed me that God is still with us. Recovering from that grief and the gift of that soup was central to my journey into ministry. Therefore it seemed fitting that this was the piece that was playing that brought me glad tidings of comfort and joy once more at a time of grief. It showed that God was indeed still with us. There have been some beautiful gifts of care and love offered again these last few days.

When I really think of the gifts I have been given, the greatest is of course life itself. This is of course the ultimate free gift. The ultimate unearned grace. It is easy to say we are grateful, for the gifts we have been given, whether at Christmas or throughout the year; whether they are material or spiritual in nature. But I am not so sure that this is what gratitude actually is. Gratitude is active thing, it is more than giving thanks, it is doing something with the gifts we have been given.

This is really what I would like us to think about over the coming days as we approach Christmas. To consider the gifts that we have been granted and to perhaps think of the gifts we would like. To remember, but not passively, let’s instead make of them acts of remembrance, of all that has been freely given to us, gifted to us. Let’s also make from these gifts a true act of gratitude for all that is our lives. Let’s become a part of the gift that is life itself and express this in our being. Let’s become the gift to the world. And pour out this gift on one another and to all life, in all that we feel, all that we think, all that we say and all that we do…

Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "Blogspot"