Today is Proxy Christmas (November 25th) and the official start to the Christmas season in Chichester! I am sooo excited. It's as if Christmas has crawled inside my imagination and reinvented the magic, wonder and love in a matter of 24 hours...
Last night Smiles, Doc Ward and I celebrated Proxy Christmas Eve with a lovely bottle of white wine, Turkey in sweet and sour sauce and my first ever viewing the stupendous Polar Express! Oh my goodness, why had no-one told me it was one of the best Christmas movies ever?
As we sat entranced at the epic sweaps of the camera (it's animation but if you watch it you'll know what I mean), the excellent scripting and the fabulous warm feeling that Christmas is on it's way I could feel the grins growing on each of our faces. We were actually ended oooing and aaaaing and cheering at St Nic.
There is something amazing about Christmas. I know it's not the real date of Jesus birth but I love the idea that our nation stops to celebrate it anyway. It's easy to get disillusioned by how comercial it's become and that many kids get the origins of Christmas and Easter mixed up, but it's still the one holiday of the year where families gather, people will go to Church to hear carols and remind themselves of the story. Christingle was one of my favourite services as a child...
"Take an orange for the world,
Wrap it round with red, red ribbon,
Take a candle for the light,
Add the fruit God gives us all..."
Standing in a ring inside the old Anglician church in Grendon, shoulder to shoulder with my fellow class mates, mesmerised by the light of all those candles and thinking about a man who could be baby and a light for a whole world...
I adore the Christmas festival. I love getting home, I love the gift giving, I love the tree, I love reading the night before Christmas with my sister and brother and going down to check if St Nic had come in age order. I love eating til I think I'm gonna burst, I love Christmas morning at church when Dad talks about Jesus, I love going to the Sharp's house for Trundle-Sharp Christmas... I know I'm very lucky but Christmas has always been a real time of love, family, community, celebration and laughter. Oooo I can't wait! xc