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If the Tree isn't up yet, then we shall decorate it and start to put up the cards. Thank God for Blutack.
Rushing home from the supermarket we realise we forgot something essential so back we go. Why is i that we can never just buy that one item. A bargain catches our eye and suddenly the trolley fills up again. After all the shops will be closed for a whole two days! How will you cope? You might just run out of some essential life-preserving item like brandy butter! Then of course, there's that hike of 2.5% on VAT just around the calendar corner. We really must stock up with things. Life is going to be unbearable at 20%.
Arguably this week just before Christmas is the maddest week of the year and there is, without doubt, a sigh of relief as the doors of the shops close early and there's nothing more we can do to get ready for Christmas. Whatever we've forgotten we'll have to do without for a whole 48 hours. Still, there's the wrapping of the presents. Thank God for sticky back tape. How I envy those who can gift-wrap so beautifully that it seems a shame to remove the paper. In between, it's back to the kitchen. All that food to prepare. What a horde of Martha's we become. No time for Mary now.
Never mind, it will all be worth it when we stack the dishwasher in the late evening of Christmas Day. We can relax in front of the telly and watch all those old films we've missed since last year and the special Christmas programmes like Festive EastEnders where the family feuds surface and make us glad we live so peacefully. Let's hope they don't put on programmes that tell us of those for whom Christmas is a time of loneliness or hunger. That would really spoil things. We can then go to bed satisfied that despite all the odds we've got through it all.
Now let's remind ourselves of what it's all about. Here's a clue:
While all things were in quiet silence
And the night was in the midst of her course.
They Almighty Word, O Lord
Came down from heaven from thy royal throne
(Wisdom 18, 14-15)
And the night was in the midst of her course.
They Almighty Word, O Lord
Came down from heaven from thy royal throne
(Wisdom 18, 14-15)
Ah, that's it - Christmas is about a different kind of siege - when God came on earth in Jesus to seize our hearts and lives and transform them with love.
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