ITN have produced a Christmas Channel on You Tube with an iPhone app with support and funding from The Jerusalem Trust.
I’ve just found the free iPhone app and some of the videos look interesting and fun …. some don’t, but it’s a great idea to get people thinking other things that just commercialism over festive period.
This weekend sees the Christmas Dickens Festival hit Rochester. This is a great time of fun and a really good time to visit Rochester if you don’t mind crowds!
At the cathedral we expect anything up to 6000 people to pass through the building today. As well as welcome them, in keeping with our Benediction tradition of hospitality, we hope to be able to engage with people and encourage them to pause as they consider the meaning of Christmas.
Today pop down to have your photo taken in our nativity scene as part of Get in the Picture, or wander the building and find some quiet place to meet with God, or listen to monologues from the Christmas story characters, or light a candle for someone you care for or miss particularly at this time of year ….
The opportunities are varied – why not pop down and pop in for a while – it may be the last chance you get to pause before Christmas!
The Christmas Dickens Festival is soon to be upon us and as part of that Rochester cathedral is joining in with the Get in the Picture campaign which looks like it will be fun.
In additiion we are looking to encourage people to pause and consider what Christmas is all about. Throughout the day various characters (some you will of heard of, some maybe not!) from the nativity scene will give a short monologue of their memories and we believe these will cause people to wonder what the season is all about.
Put the dates in your diary (5 and 5 Dec) and pay us a visit. It will be a really great day.
Saw this on a few blogs so when ahead and ordered my poster – I’m not disappointed and a few people in the office have had a laugh looking at it.
I like it – it’s a piece of work which really draws you in with a smile and it brings a different feel to Christmas art and will be part of the decorations in my house this coming Christmastime!
Well that was Christmas.
Time with family and friends.
Cheer, laughter and fun.
We have enjoyed company, playing on the Wii, and generally being with the family having fun.
I have deliberately taken a week away from blogging to enjoy the family time more and the result of doing that means I have a lot of thoughts.
Midnight mass at the cathedral was a special time and, for me, a great and unique way to place Jesus Christ right at the centre of the festival.
Starting with Jesus causes me to ask …’that was Christmas, so what now!?’ Now that the festival is over is it time to pack Jesus off back into the other Bible stories and get on again with our lives; secretly sighing some relief that the busyness of the season has now passed.
I can’t help but think that if that is the case for us then we have failed in our celebration of Christmas, if not in the actual act of celebrating then in the meaning of Christmas itself. There must be more!
For the first time in a while over this Christmas period there were a number of younger children present in our festivities – babies and toddlers. I had forgotten how totally distracting and consuming a baby can be. Babies demanding attention so much that they require a lifestyle change; being the centre of attention not just for the parents but more or less for all of the people present.
As an aside it reminded me of a while ago when a couple I know well said that the addition of a baby to their life, due in a few months, was not going to be disruptive or change anything. I did not disagree with them, but instead I kinda smiled smugly to myself with the words ‘you just wait’ in my mind, remembering that I felt just the same, along with many prospective parents some 15 years ago, before the birth of our first child. No matter how hard you try, the arrival of a child into a family IS disruptive and EVERYTHING does change. In short, life is transformed. There is no going back. I am sure I am not alone as a parent in struggling to think was life was like before children – the way they not only take up space in the home, but the way they take up mind space with worry, concern and delight as well!
The arrival of Jesus as a baby was a disruptive experience. The arrival of Jesus caused life transformations to occur 2000 years ago, and that same arrival has been demanding and causing the same transformation every day since.
If we move away from the Christmas with the thought that the Christ child will have no effect on our lives, then I think we have missed out on something of the meaning of this event. The arrival of Jesus, the incarnation, means things are now different. I have come away from this Christmas realising that to try and pretend nothing has changed is possibly the greatest missed opportunity of all time.
This year I have designed and sent this virtual card to friends on my email list (if you did not get one and think you should be on that list – apologies but I don’t have your email address so email it me!)
Rather than spend money on cards this year I will be donating what I would have spent to Stop the Traffik.
You can make a donation too by clicking here.
I just love this poster.
Jesus born in a bus stop – an urban shelter.
I can’t quite work out why, but the image ‘resonates’ in a way that provokes and excites me because it challenges the traditional image that seems to have become warm and respectable. The King of the Universe, born in a freezing bus shelter with some not even bothering to notice – now that’s shocking!
I think it is the best that the CAN have come up with for a while.
The God child is born
Merry Christ-mas
For as long as I can remember it has been tradition in the Ryan household to invite friends around for a birthday party for Jesus on Christmas Eve. I guess you can say it has become a tradition over the last decade or so.
Interestingly we started this when our children, and my nieces and nephews, were very little, but on the odd occasion when we have mentioned not doing this (such as this year) our children have made it clear that it is a tradition that is important to them to continue.
Traditions have developed within this tradition, such as the drinking of the odd glass or two of vodka (including toffee vodka tonight!) and the time together is good fun and a chance for all of us to relax together. It’s just good to eat,drink and laugh together.
Tonight I reflected on how we have all changed over the last decade, and certainly the children have all grown immensely, which shows that time is running quickly.
To those that it concerns, thanks for coming and joining with us in our traditional Christmas Eve birthday party for Jesus. Without you being here it would be a non-event. More photos here.
Today saw St Mark’s church transformed into a market place for the second year running (photos here)
People wandered around the market and while being involved in various activities such as tasting sweets from different parts of the world, making lamp holders from clay, creating mangers from wood or being interviewed by Deborah from the BBC (Bethlehem Broadcasting Corporation of course!)also collected various parts to be able to make a Christingle.
The time together ended with the Christingles being lit in the darkened church which is always a powerful experience.
I love events like today wen there is so much interaction, questioning and discussion as this is what learning together as ‘church’ is all about.
The Shiny Headed Prophet 