Turning Presents Into True Gifts

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 soon, but not just yet. I’ve got too much to do.

Have you experienced any “Bah Humbug” moments yet?

I noticed one from a friend of mine. She posted a “Meme” on Facebook. A cartoon depicting two figures. The first is putting up Christmas decorations and saying to the other “It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas” to which the other responds in far less enthusiastic way “It’s not Christmas though is it Barbara, because it is still XXXXXXX November.”

The Meme was a protest against how soon Christmas had begun this year, especially in the shops etc. I replied to the ”Meme” stating “Just to be an annoying pedant. It’s Advent, it began on Sunday. If you want to be truly liturgically accurate Christmas doesn’t actually begin until sunset on Christmas Eve. None of us want that, so please no more Bah Humbugging. “There followed many other complaints about the celebration of Christmas coming too early, people putting up their decorations too early etc. I put up mine on Tuesday night. I have gone much further than I usually do. Molly is certainly enjoying this. It seems she loves stealing baubles from the tree and playing with them. I have had to move Father Christmas and his little helpers out of her reach. Many folk have been telling me off all week for doing so, telling me I wasn’t allowed to until Thursday 1st December, to which I replied that Advent had already begun. It’s funny how folk suddenly get all Puritanical about these things from time to time.

I get where this all comes from, especially as it has been Christmas in most of the shops, since the beginning of November. There has been a Christmas tree in Café Nero for weeks. I know this because Molly stole a bauble from their tree several weeks ago. It has been her favourite toy since then.

The “Bah humbugging” about the early celebration of Christmas stems from this sense of over commercialisation and the thought that the spirit of the season will be lost. It seems that for many Christmas has become an almost secular exercise. Afterall less than half of the population now identify as Christian, at least according the figures published this week, from last year’s census.

Is it true though. Have we killed the spirit of the season with this over commercialisation? I’m not convinced. I think the spirit lives on and actually is present in the very act of such celebrations and even the buying and commercial activities.

If we look purely at the surface, there appears little evidence of my view. The Christmas season appears to be mass consumerism gone mad. The worst excesses of which seem to form in that most hideous of American imports “Black Friday”, which in reality is linked to the American holiday of “Thanksgiving”. We have not taken that part on, just “Black Friday”, not the giving of thanks bit. This occurred over the weekend that Advent began. And yet there is the spirit of Christmas in the spiritual elements of “Thanks Giving”. This is surely something that can be extended into this Advent season and on into Christmas itself. The spirit of Christmas is surely about giving thanks for the gifts we have been given and expressing this thanks in our lives by using our gifts in this our lives. We can become gifts to this our world, we can live in and through gratitude.

This can be exemplified in the presents that we buy for our loved ones, as they can become gifts. If chosen and wrapped with loving intention, then surely even this commercial activity is spiritual in nature.

In “The Gift” by David Blanchard, distinguished between a gift and a present. How the gift has a far more deeply spiritual and heartfelt significance than merely a present. It touched a part, deep in the heart of me.

Now of course the word “present” is something the spiritually inclined are obsessed with in our current age. So many talk of the gift of the present moment, that this is where life is. I’m certainly not one to wish to argue with these thoughts. That said I wonder if sometimes we become so obsessed with the present that we forget about the gifts we carry with us that we have been given in those many moments in the past. Too often we wish to lose what has gone before in our intense focus on the present that we fail to embrace the gifts that have come throughout our lives. I have come to believe that to truly embrace the moment, to be truly present requires me to be fully engaged with every moment of my life, for there the true gifts of life emerge.

Perhaps to truly live in the present moment is to bring our whole selves, every breath of our lives and perhaps every life that has made our life into this sublime moment.

This year I have reflected much on my life, perhaps more than I have for a while. I have thought much about the gifts I’ve been given throughout my days. Gifts I have not always appreciated at the time. In fact, many I failed to notice when they were given. The gifts of the love given by the precious people I have shared my life with, some who are no longer physically with me. The things they took the time to show me, how to do things and just how to be; the times they made me laugh and cry; the joy that they brought to my being. Gifts given freely from their heart to mine.

I’ve also been thinking of the many gifts I was simply born with, that I have not always made best use of, the Graces of life. I have been contemplating how I can make better use of these, the ultimate of free gifts, not just for myself but for the good of all?

Here's an extract from a prayer I shared during the Advent service.

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.

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.

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...)

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 is 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”…

“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.

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 anactive thing, it is more than giving thanks, it is doing something with the gifts we have been given.

This is something to reflect on over the coming weeks 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 it an act 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…

Below is a devotion based on 

the material in this "blogspot"

Who Needs Presents? The Gift is the Joy

“The Gift” by David Blanchard

"Sometimes I think I can teach my children things that will make life better for them as they grow up. I want to believe I can protect them, or that there is some way for me to do their learning for them. This line of thinking is routinely floored, not because I am not always the best teacher. Despite my efforts to avoid repeating mistakes, I’m still learning things I thought I knew. Just last year I mistook a gift for a present.

This gift was a homemade potholder woven of colourful scraps of cloth. It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t beautiful. It wasn’t particularly unusual. Accepting it as a present, I placed it into service besides the stove.

Four days before Christmas I was called to officiate at a memorial service for a friend. Talking with her five–and nine–year–old daughters, I asked what things they liked to remember about their mom. What things they did together? What had she taught them? They were busy, deep at work on a gift-making project, but they expressed some memories that mattered, and recounted some gifts their mother had shared with them; making cookies…snuggling in bed…being their Brownie leader…planting bulbs. Then the nine year old looked down and said, “And she taught us how to make these potholders!”

Of course! A gift! How could I miss it?

Presents are the sort of things that fit on lists, complete with size and color preference. Presents are the sort of things we are smart enough to ask for. Gifts are altogether different. We don’t usually think to ask for them, perhaps because we think we don’t deserve them, or don’t want to risk expressing the need. Maybe we don’t even recognize the need ourselves. Gifts differ from presents because no matter what form they take, they always represent something greater, something deeper, something more enduring; they are about things like love. Respect and affirmation.

Gifts given are often woven into some simple token. And sometimes protecting our won comfort, we give them in disguise. They can be easy to miss.

Now I try to give more gifts than presents, and without too much camouflage. Be gift bearers yourselves. Give them along with presents, and look carefully for the gifts others are trying to give you."

When I came across “The Gift” by David Blanchard, it touched a part of me, deep in the heart of me. I just love the way he distinguishes between a gift and present. How the gift has a far more deeply spiritual and heartfelt significance than merely a present.

Now of course the word “present” is something the spiritually inclined are obsessed with in our present age. So many talk of the gift of the present moment, that this is where life is. I’m certainly not one to wish to argue with these thoughts. That said I do wonder if sometimes we become so obsessed with the present that we forget about the gifts we carry with us that we have been given in those many moments in the past. Too often we wish to lose what has gone before in our intense focus on the present that we fail to embrace the gifts that have come throughout our lives. I have come to believe that to truly embrace the moment, to be truly present requires me to be fully engaged with every moment of my life, for there the true gifts of life emerge.

Perhaps to truly live in the present moment is to bring our whole selves, every breath of our lives and perhaps every life that has made our life into this sublime moment.

This year I have reflected much on my life, perhaps more than I have for some time. I suspect that this is one of the gifts of grief. I have thought much about the gifts I’ve been given throughout my days. Gifts I have not always appreciated at the time. In fact many I failed to notice when they were given. Now I’m not really talking about the material gifts here, more the gifts given by the precious people I have shared my life with, some who are no longer physically with me. The things they took the time to show me, how to do things and just how to be; the times they made me laugh and cry; the joy that they brought to my being. Gifts given freely from their heart to mine.

I’ve also been thinking of the many gifts I was simply born with, that I have not always made best use of, the Graces of life. I have been contemplating how can I make better use of these the ultimate of free gifts, not just for myself but for the good of all?

These thoughts started to form as I shared a prayer in worship last Sunday. A prayer I adapted from a source I cannot recall...The following words have been settling deep into my soul this last week...

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.

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?

Perhaps that is something to ponder in this season of Advent...

For most of us Christmas is about the giving and receiving of presents, but not necessarily about the gifts we both give and receive.

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...

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 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?

I certainly do not think so. The spirit of Christmas is found I believe in those simple words from my favourite carol “In the Bleak mid-winter”…

“What shall I give him? Give my heart”

Gordon B Mckeeman once said “Christmas is not so much a matter of explanation and interpretation as it is a mood and a feeling. It is a time in the cycle of the year set apart by hope and fellowship and generosity. Christmas is the season of the heart.”

I agree with Gordon 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 as I said only recently I believe, as Desmond Tutu believes, that we each of us possess a piece of God’s heart within us. Therefore when we 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.

A funny thing occurred to me the other day as I sat in Café Nero, laptop in front of me, drinking coffee and listening to gentle Christmas songs and taking in all the people all around, it occurred to me that each day I believe in Christmas more and more than ever did before, even more than when I was a child. When I was a child I believed in this benevolent creature that would leave gifts for me in a white pillow case if I was a good enough to receive them. I carried on pretending to believe in this long after I knew it was nonsense. I think the main reason was not to break my older brother’s heart who believed far longer than me. When I look back now by the age of about six or seven I had rejected all magic, I just didn’t let anyone know. Over the years I rejected everything until there was nothing left to believe in, not even myself and certainly not humanity. Nihilism is an ugly state of being, I promise you.

Nowadays I believe in everything and somehow more than everything, but please don’t ask me to explain it. I can’t I can only really experience it. I see the magic, the miracle and the joy in the universal Christmas mythos in everything and more, even the horror gosh and there is so much of that too. I suspect though that the horror is really a result of that rejection of everything, the nihilism that is a part of humanity. That other part of us that mocks those bells at Christmas time.

Christmas is about the hope and potential of what human life can be. We can bring that love alive in our lives, but it aint easy. It takes real courage to rise above the cynicism of our age and time. Hope takes real courage.

We can bring the gift of Christmas alive and it comes by giving our whole hearts, whole heartedly. In so doing we can once again truly know and experience joy, but not in childish way, in a childlike and yet mature way.

You see the true gift of Christmas is to truly experience joy, something that can easily be lost in life. Joy you see is at the heart of all of this. Joy is the real gift of Christmas and it is the joy that so many people have given me in my life that I need to bring into being and thus allow the gift of Christmas to incarnate in the present moment.

To allow the gift of joy to come alive in our lives we have to believe in life, or at least that is the gift that life has kept on teaching as I have kept on journeying on and on and on…not really going anywhere just wandering round the circle of life.

Now this joy I am speaking of is described near perfectly by Carl Scovel in what he has called “The Great Surmise”. In a talk delivered at the 1994 Unitarian Universalist General Assembly he described what he meant by it:

“The Great Surmise says simply this: At the heart of all creation lies a good intent, a purposeful goodness, from which we come, by which we live our fullest, and to which we shall at last return. This is the supreme mystery of our lives. This goodness is ultimate-not fate, not freedom, not mystery, energy, order, finite, but this good intent in creation is our source, our centre, and our destiny...Our work on earth is to explore, enjoy, and share this goodness. Neither duty nor suffering nor progress nor conflict-not even survival-is the aim of life, but joy. Deep, abiding, uncompromised joy.”

Joy I believe is the gift we are meant to bring alive at Christmas time. This is the gift of life to bring this to life in everything we feel, everything we think, everything we say and everything we do…

Whatever I have been given materially in my life has never lasted and has certainly never enabled me to connect to all that is, all that has ever been and all that has ever been. That said the joy and love I have been gifted throughout my days, when I take time to really feel it, has truly allowed me to not only celebrate but experience every precious moment.

This is the gift, to bring joy to our world, because by gum it needs it…

Searching for the Heart of Christmas

We are well and truly into Advent now, well into the festival of light at this the darkest time of the year. How are you doing? Are you in the spirit of the season or are you struggling a little. It can be a difficult time for some folk in so many ways. It’s just so easy to get lost in so many different things. So much so that we fail to fully experience what this time is all about. We all have a bit of Scrooge within us do we not, we all have a little bit of “Bah Humbug”.

I've been thinking these last few days what exactly Christmas is all about, what is at its heart? What is the spirit of Christmas we hear so much about? I've been asking other people too and have heard some interesting views I've also had a look at what is has meant in the past too. It has not been celebrated in the same way over the years. Some of the things people complain about it today have always been present. This blogspot is an attempt to just explore what Christmas is about, what is at its heart? What is the heart of Christmas?

A friend of mine says that Christmas is a time of love and compassion of bringing to the surface our better selves. For many it is about family (however that is understood) coming together. For some it is about God’s Love incarnating perfectly in life, in the Christ child. For others it is the celebration of the end of winter and the coming of life and renewal in the spring time. I think it is all of this and a whole lot more. It seems to me that Christmas is the ultimate universal festival of the heart. It is a mixture of so many traditions and it has altered so much over time, embracing and incorporating so much of this simple spirit of light and love. Christmas is the ultimate festival of the heart, perfectly placed in the deep mid winter when we need it the most.

That said the very fact that it is a festival of the heart causes difficulty for some, if not all of us. Christmas is difficult for everyone in one way or another. Some places of worship offer what are called “Blue Christmas” services. These were begun for those who had suffered losses during the year to remember their loved ones, but this has now extended to include all who find this time of year difficult. Feelings such as grief and suffering are felt more intensely at this time of year because they stand in such contrast to what the Christmas ideal stands for; namely a time symbolising the fullness of the heart; a time when we are supposed to be at one with all that we love, with all that is love. It is important to remember this as we embrace the season with all our hearts.

Christmas is the season of the heart. It is a time to focus on the ties of the heart, the loves of the heart, the dreams of the heart; it is a time to focus on the hearts yearnings and longings; it is a time when we are called to concentrate on the heart, on what it wants, what it needs and what it compels us to be. Perhaps the darkness and the cold of winter helps us with this as through it we appreciate the light and the warmth that the heart of the season can bring. Perhaps by feeling cut off or separate from the ideals of season, by our own grief and sorrows, we can be brought closer to the true heart of it. Not because we are told me must, but because our own heart’s desire it.

We need to remember this as we rush through this season; we need to remember that for many there is pain and suffering. This is why my theme for Advent this year has about bringing that bit of light from our own hearts and souls into this season. By bringing light to the suffering of others we can bring warmth and light to our own hearts. This helps us connect to ourselves fully, to one another, to all life and to that eternal and universal spirit that runs through all life. For “It is better to light one candle than curse the darkness.” When we light the candle within our own hearts we incarnate the Kingdom of God that is within us and we make it present amongst us. In so doing we bring that commonwealth of love to life right here right now.

The heart of Christmas is connection; connecting with best of ourselves, that of others and that of life. Music and singing aid this. People come together and sing communally more at this time of the year than at any other. We sing together; we sing “Glad Tidings of Comfort and Joy”, both of which are needed during this season. I know the power, the spiritual power of singing so well. Singing is one of those practices that bring me closer to that universal, that eternal spirit, it fills my heart to overflowing and compels me to fill the cups of others. It compels me to give my heart.

To give ones heart is the heart of Christmas. As Christina Rosetti wrote “What shall I give him, give him my heart.”This is the heart of Christmas.

Now of course some will argue, usually the “Bah Humbuggers” that this is not what Christmas, or whatever mid-winter festival they believe they are celebrating, is actually about. Maybe they are correct, but I suspect that they are not. Christmas has meant many things to many different people at many different times. It incorporates many traditions, is celebrated differently around the world and at different times in many other cultures. Some would like to see the back of it from a variety of perspectives both religious and secular, but that’s never going to happen. The power of love runs deep and the heart will always overcome the “Bah Humbuggers”. Just as lighting one candle always overcomes the darkness.

Did you know that Christmas was once banned in England. The Puritans in Parliament wanted the people to focus purely on Sunday as the holy day and wanted rid of all the other festivals, such as Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, which they considered both heathen and Catholic. Christmas was a time of rejoicing and in the eyes of the Puritans debauchery. Over indulgence and revelry at this time of year is not a new phenomena it has its roots in the Christmas tradition. The Puritans turned Christmas to Christ-tide, a day for fasting rather than over-indulgence. In 1647 they passed an ordinance abolishing it. That said as much as they attempted to enforce them the laws were hard to maintain and the people continued to celebrate these feast in the ways they always had. The measures were completely swept away following the Restoration of the Monarchy in 1660 when all legislation passed between 1642 and 1660 was made null and void.

Now of course theologically speaking the Puritans were quite right in most of their objections about Christmas and the time that it was held. That said Christmas was never a celebration of theological correctness, of biblical literalism, of doctrinal purity, of historical factuality. Christmas is rooted in the pre Christian traditions. It was originally a celebration of the returning of the sun at the winter solstice that the church co-opted. The birth of Jesus was not assigned to December 25th until the year 336 and only after much debate and argument as this was the time of year that was originally assigned to the sun gods. This included Mithra, a popular deity worshipped throughout the Roman Empire as well as the dying and rising Egyptian god Osiris. So yes they Puritans and other critics are and were correct when they said, and when they say that Christmas was created by the Roman church and was a co-option of already existing winter solstice celebrations.

Does this matter? Well to many yes it does. To me I actually think it enhances and adds to the universal and eternal spirit that is the heart of Christmas.

Christmas, as we celebrate it today, owes as much to Victorian England and the writing of Charles Dickens as to anything else. “A Christmas Carol” first published on December 1843 is the epitome of what we see as the heart of Christmas today. Dickens caught the imagination of his readers in Britain and America and did so much to create the Christmas ideal a time for family and the simple pleasures of coming together around the table heart to heart.

Christmas as we understand it today and certainly the message that lies at its heart has a deep and rich history and has been fed by many traditions both ancient and modern. This is why I believe Christmas is for everyone, in every time and place. It matters not what name we give this festival of the heart that comes alive at this time of year. It matters little to me the variety of roots that formed it either; they certainly do not diminish its power. Quite the opposite actually the universality of it actually enhances my faith in that universal and eternal spirit that I name God, that light of hope that finds a way through in the darkness of winter and warms our hearts and hearths, that runs through it.

You see the heart of Christmas is the heart itself, burst to overflowing, lit up bringing light and warmth into this season of darkness and cold. It brings hope in what can be very cynical times, as it always has. Christmas is the dream of the heart, wishing to come alive. This is why Christmas is both the religious and emotional centre of the year for most folk. Christmas is the time of the heart, which calls us to our truest nature, to be all that we can be.

This is why it is the holiest of holy days and nights. This is why I believe it is for everyone regardless of background and or faith, or lack of it. Christmas connects to something universal, something eternal in all of us which allows us to connect to our true selves, to one another, to all life and to that loving and eternal spirit that runs through all life.

“Oh I wish it could be Christmas every day”. Well it can be if we make it Christmas every day. It begins by lighting that lamp, that fire in our hearts and in our hearths.

“For it is better to light one candle than curse the darkness”

The Gift is in the Giving when we Give our Hearts

“What can I give him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

Yet what can I give him: give my heart.”

Christina Rossetti

I like most people I love singing carols, well if truth be told I pretty much love singing anything. "My life goes on in endless song, how can I keep from singing?" “In the Bleak Midwinter” may well be my favourite carol. Yes I know it is not the jolliest, but I suspect it is the most beautiful. It is certainly the one that touches me the deepest, in the roots of my soul. It is the final line that has always tugged at my heart strings. The words “Yet what can I give him: give my heart.” This to me is the message of the whole Christmas story; this is the message of the universal Christmas “mythos”. This is the religious message of Christmas and the message that the life of Jesus brought to humanity and it is a message that can still reach we who live in the materially obsessed 21^st century. So what is it that we should be giving? Well I beleive that we should be giving our hearts. We should be giving ourselves wholeheartedly to one another.

The Carol brings to mind the following story of "Poinsettia" told by my old minister 
John Midgely.

"In recent years a plant, the Poinsettia, has become a new symbol of Advent, because of its joyous red colour and the story associated with it.

It originates from Mexico where the associated legend is a miracle story, told to the children as part of the Festival of the Holy Journey, a re-enactment of the journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem. It comes to its climax when the couple arrive in Bethlehem and find no room at the inn. For the Christmas Eve service the people of the towns and villages attend their church and bring gifts for the Christ child, as the three Wise Men did.

The story tells of Pepita, a poor Mexican girl who wanted to attend but had no gift to bring. As she walked slowly to the chapel with her cousin Pedro, her heart was filled with sadness rather than joy. “I am sure, Pepita, that even the most humble gift, if given in love, will be acceptable in His eyes,’ said Pedro to her, consolingly. Not knowing what else to do, Pepita knelt by the roadside and gathered a handful of common weeds, fashioning them into a small bouquet. Looking at the scraggy bunch, she felt more saddened and embarrassed than ever by the humbleness of her offering. She fought back a tear as she entered the small village chapel. All this was made worse by the jeering remarks of those who had bought much grander gifts.

As she approached the alter, she remembered Pedro’s kind words: “Even the most humble gift, if given in love, will be acceptable in His eyes.” She felt her spirit lift as she knelt to lay the bouquet at the foot of the nativity scene.

Suddenly the leaves of the bouquet of weeds changed. They were transformed into blooms of brilliant red, and all who saw them were certain that they had witnessed a Christmas miracle, right before their eyes. From that day on, the bright red flowers were known as Flores de Noche Buena, Flowers of the Holy Night, for they bloomed each year during the Christmas season.

'Even the most humble gift, if given in love, will be acceptable.'"

“Even the most humble gift if given in love will be acceptable," or as we often hear, this time of year, “It’s the thought that counts”. After all isn’t the giving of gifts symbolic of the expression of love. It is not really about the gift at all, but the love expressed in selecting and then giving the present. There is real religion to be found in those ribbons and wrapping paper.

Whenever I hear the phrase “It’s the thought that counts” I always think of my brother and the time he was a poor music student in the late 1980’s. He was studying in Leeds and would often walk from Headingley to Birstall some eleven miles, because he couldn’t afford the bus fare home. Well one Christmas he was so poor that he couldn’t really afford presents for anyone and so he bought the family a joint present of both The Christmas Radio and TV Times, bumper double editions of course! As you can imagine he has suffered from years of stick for this. I also remember him one year beautifully wrapping a gift for our step brother Alan’s two boys. They opened it with a great deal of excitement to reveal a raw potato inside. One of the boys looked most disappointed while the other leapt about in excitement and said “Yes we can have chips”. Yes it definitely is the thought that counts. The two boys who are now fully grown men remember the gift very well and were joking about it at a recent family wedding.

So if it’s the thought that counts, why do we give presents, however humble, at Christmas? Well it obviously dates back 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 6^th of January, the 12^th 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...

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 myth of 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?

“What shall I give him? Give my heart” or if you prefer   “Even the most humble gift, if given in love, will be acceptable”

Perhaps these are thoughts that we ought to be thinking about as we continue our Christmas shopping. I will certainly be doing so as I begin mine. I will bring my heart into the experience. I will practise not making it a chore, but an expression of the love I feel and know for those I am buying gifts for. I will try not to rush the experience. I will attempt to make space as I purchase the gifts. I will attempt to increase my sensitivity to the experience instead of just trying to get it out of the way. How many of us just rush through the whole season instead of absorbing the love, the religion that this gift giving expresses?

Christmas can only be experienced, enjoyed, if we slow down and really feel and watch the love that is at the core of it. Now some would see this as a luxury as wasting time, but is it? As David H Cole points out “Antoine De Saint-Expury wrote in ‘The Little Prince’: ‘It is the time you have wasted on your rose that makes your rose so important’” He extends this to Christmas time claiming it’s really important to ‘waste’ time at Christmas. What he is saying is how important it is that we slow down in this season of Advent and pay attention to what we are doing to see the love expressed in the time we ‘waste’ thinking about the gifts we buy and wrap, or the scarves we knit and cakes we bake. By paying attention to these activities we give our hearts, remembering always that “Even the most humble gift, if given in love, will be acceptable”

Of course if we give from our hearts, if we buy, wrap and offer our gifts in love we will receive exactly what it is our hearts desire. For it truly is in giving that we receive. This is where the Christmas magic incarnates in our very lives. When we give with our hearts to and for others we truly receive all that we could have ever wished for.

The Christmas “Mythos” is that of perfect love incarnating in human form. That love can manifest itself today in our hearts and lives. We all have the capacity for great good, if we would but feed the good wolf within each of us. It is surely here that the hope for the whole of humanity lies. If we feed the loving wolf within ourselves then the wolf of hate and fear dies off. If we do we have already begun to spread love and we have begun to bring joy to the world.

There is so much that is wrong with our world. Watching the news each night highlights this, so much destruction, so little love. There is so much that mocks those bells at Christmas time and there does indeed seem to be a deficit of “peace on earth and good will to all.” I do not believe that it has to be like that. We can incarnate that love in our lives and we can begin to spread it out into our world. We can create tidal waves of compassion, that can swamp the whole of the earth.

So how do we achieve this? Well it begins as we pay attention to the love that we feel for those that we buy or make our gifts for, it continues as we take time to wrap those gifts and really comes to life as we give them to those we love and experience that moment of magic as they open them...it is in those moments that we come to know that the gift truly is in the giving.

“What can I give him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

Yet what can I give him: give my heart.”

And if you do it is you who will receive in abundance