Month: December 2025

In recent years, Christmas seems to have got longer. For many people, the holiday lasts a week until 2^nd January. This is the case at the university where I worked, although the extended holiday was driven less by the wish to give staff extra holiday than a desire to save heating and lighting costs across the campus. Those who work in retail have a rather different experience of Chirstmas, as it has become a festival of shopping. As the song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas” reminds us, there is nothing new in this. From early times, Christmas was celebrated over an extended period; the twelve days are the period from Christmas Day to January 6th, Epiphany, which in the Chirstian calendar marks the visit of the Wise Men to the infant Jesus. For the most part, the twelve days were largely observed as a time for partying and celebration; a welcome break from the dark and cold just after the shortest day on December 21st. There are some important religious days included within the twelve days, some of which act as a reality check to the theme of goodwill and jollity; St Stephen on the 26th, the first Christian to die for his beliefs; Holy Innocents on the 28th, marking the massacre of children that King Herod is said to have carried out in an attempt to kill the infant Jesus. I suspect few apart from vicars really notice these. However, somewhere, between perpetual sack-cloth and ashes and eternal frivolities is a balance in which we should strive to live.

Rev David Poyner

I am in the middle of the round of Christmas carol services. By Christmas Day I will have led 6 services as well as attending another with friends. But this goes with being a vicar. Carols take all forms, ancient and modern, simple and complicated in their message. Some have very little to do with the stories in the Bible about Christmas. But they are sung, often by those who would not consider themselves to be religious. Music can move us in ways that words alone fail to do. The Holy Spirit has  ways of reaching to people that they, I, do not expect. I do not worry too much about the words in carols, I am happy simply that, as they are sung, the Spirit moves.

Rev David Poyner

This coming Sunday is traditionally known as Gaudate Sunday, from the Latin reading that was said before the priest celebrated mass. Gaudate is the Latin word meaning rejoice and the reading was from one of St Paul’s letters; “Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice”. Two weeks before Christmas, it is not always easy to find the time to draw breath, never mind rejoice. This coming week I am off to Belfast for a scientific meeting; back on Thursday, carol service on Friday, then Sunday, then Monday… I am sure it is much worse for all with big families. However, we are really missing something important if we have no time for joy at Christmas. The conventional piety is that we ought to feel gratitude at God’s gift to us of Jesus but I’ve never been very comfortable with that approach; it uses the language of duty and obligation, not of joy and rejoicing. For me, that comes in the words and music of Christmas or the crisp winter days. However it works for you, I pray (yes, really…) that you will experience rejoicing this Christmas.

Rev David Poyner

Advent covers the period over the four Sundays before Christmas, so it usually begins at the very end of November; a fact unknown to most makers of Advent Calendars. It is a time of preparation, but not just for Christmas, but also for the Christian belief that Christ Jesus will return to earth to bring this world to an end and replace it with what he called the “Kingdom of God”. This is not a simple doctrine and the church has always struggled to understand it fully, as do I. At its heart is the idea that this world remains imperfect, but one day perfection will come. So we wait and prepare, as Christians have done for the last 2000 years. Some might say that this is evidence that Jesus was deluded; we are waiting for an event that will never come. My counter to this is that God deals with eternity; 2000 years or 2000 million years are all alike on that time scale. Particularly in an age when we crave instant results, this is an alien concept. However, Advent speaks with its own quiet voice about a God who is beyond our understanding but who reveals himself through love; the reality of a world where God’s time is not our time. We need to set aside our preconceptions to enter into this world; the four weeks of Advent are a time when we are reminded to do this.

Rev David Poyner