Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Christmassy Now

We're back in Sheffield, briefly; visiting with the Gillingham's in Crookes, and heading down the hill to the Askew's in a little while...Driving through Sheffield earlier on was wonderful.

Since we got back, we've really appreciated it being dark by mid-afternoon (having never got very light all day - that orange light of the low winter sun); and the coldness in the air. These things are a part of the anticipation of Christmas, that we missed in Australia. It's not only a Christian festival; it's fundamentally a northern-European Christian festival - the Christ-story transforming northern-European pre-Christian culture. Advent makes sense at a spiritual level in the Southern hemisphere; in the North, it makes metaphorical, symbolic sense, too: light literally shining in darkness. That's important: a connection between Christ and culture. And it needs to be an ongoing connecting, across cultures - including both non-European and post-Christendom European cultures...

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