First day

First day. Guidance is to make a wish list and be ruthless about Christmas Cards. I’ve looked through our address list (on the PC, of course) and there are quite a few names to be dropped. There are, too, many people I’d still like to keep in touch with and sending a Christmas card is a good way. These include several work friends from the USA: I usually try to find the most Christian cards for them because the cards I receive are often politically correct to the extreme, wishing us a ‘happy holiday’ or similar.

I’m feeling the Christmas pressure not from the commercialisation but from the wish to ensure that the activities in Church over Christmas are as successful as possible. Christmas is one of those times when we get people who come very infrequently and I want to make sure that they are welcomed and perhaps will see their visit as a first step to becoming regular members. There’s also the pressure of all the events in the Church during the next weeks. I’m not alone in this, of course, everyone is very supportive.

Wish list? We’ve started attempting to get closer links with the local schools The Misbourne and The Gateway: the latter today asked Vicar Rosie and Youth Worker Lizzie to start regular assemblies so that’s a promising start. I have two meetings with The Misbourne in the next week or so which I hope will make some openings there.

We haven’t put up our Advent Calendar yet - it’s not full of chocolate but is a Danish version - a Christmas tree with velcro spots on which we stick various felt Christmassy things - I’ll put a picture here in a few days.

Tomorrow’s challenge is about getting gifts into perspective.

Stephen Cottrell ends each day with a joke: I’m not sure I can do the same - but here’s an amusing web site with lots of children’s Christmas jokes http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/customs/Xmas/jokes.html