Advent Day 28. Christmas Eve.

Music:
Oh, Holy Night/O Come, O Come, Emanuel. Performed by Salt Of The Sound.
Your Presence. Written and Performed by Simon Wester (Feat. Ricki Ejderkvist)
Special thank you to all our artists who were featured on the Seasons Reflections Podcast including Dear Gravity, Luke Parker, Allswell, Maximilian, Simon Wester and Salt of The Sound.



It’s Christmas Eve, the holiest night of the year, as the stores shut down, and the friends and families settle in for a meal we spend time in the traditional veneration of the saints, celebrating the one who holds the stars in place, the one who knit you together in your mother's womb, the Shepherd who leads us beside still waters, Jesus Christ. The Word of God who comes to us as a baby, a baby in a manger.
As we began our Journey 28 days ago we heard the poems of the Prophet Isaiah crying out for the one who will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, and Prince of Peace. We heard him speak of the aching imbalance of power rectified as the wolf lays down with the lamb. We heard Paul placing his hope in the one who didn’t consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage. We heard John's Gospel speak of the Light that comes into our world as the Word made flesh, We heard of John the Baptist preparing the way for the Lord and Mary singing her song of Salvation,  lifting up the humble and feeding the hungry.
Now, on this final day of our journey, we hear the story that we wait on every year during advent, the Story of the birth of Jesus.
As a child with Ukrainian Heritage, I enjoyed Christmas morning, as every child does, but I enjoyed Christmas Eve more. Christmas Eve in my home had a mysterious quality to it that appealed to my young imagination. We would all bundle up and head to my Aunties house where no one was allowed to eat until we saw the first star come out, though my brother and my cousins would always seem to find our way to sneak a few pickles.
We would sit around the table eating our traditional Ukrainian Christmas Dinner telling stories of the year past. After dinner Candles were lit, special treats were served, and then we would sit around the tree where someone would read The Christmas Story.  We would then open our presents and celebrate Christmas as a family.
One of the greatest gifts we can provide for children is to give them a Christmas tradition that, along with Santa, the tree, the presents, and all the rest, also has a memorable telling of the story of the babe born in Bethlehem.
In The Everlasting Man, G.K. Chesterton says that anyone “whose childhood has known a real Christmas has ever afterwards an association in his mind between two ideas that most of mankind must regard as remote from each other; the idea of a baby and the idea of unknown strength that sustains the stars. His instincts and imagination can still connect them.” The story of the birth in the city of David of a saviour who is Christ the Lord, captured my imagination as a child, and, lo, these many years later it still does.
As We read The Christmas story from the gospel of Luke, we see the unknown strength of the creator, placed tenderly in what we know far more tangibly as a baby in a manger.....


.....So perhaps at the end of this holy day you can find a quiet moment to light a candle, read Luke’s Christmas story, and allow your imagination to transport you to a stable in Bethlehem two thousand years ago where there is a babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. Then, like Mary, you can keep all these things and ponder them in your heart.

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