Christmas
When you were young, who took the lead role in master-minding your Christmas Day celebrations? Was it your mum, dad, perhaps jointly or maybe someone else? In days of ‘yore’, people used to enjoy foraging in the countryside for mistletoe and holly with berries to ‘deck the halls’. The Christmas tree had to be real, reach up to the ceiling and be a well-balanced shape. Nowadays there’s pressure to buy artificial ones but apparently real ones have a smaller carbon footprint and allegedly up to ten trees are planted for every one cut down. Gifts would be spread around the base of the tree with littles ones balanced on branches along with baubles, lights and tinsel making a colourful staircase to the fairy on the top. Carols would be sung, gifts given, TV watched and many calories consumed. It was God the Father who carefully oversaw the preparations for the first Christmas – he still watches to see our reactions to his most precious gift to us … often sadly obscured by the tree and by trivia.
- ‘Christmas is the day that holds all time together’ – Alexander Smith
- ‘He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree’ – Roy L Smith