The Sixth Day Of Christmas

Christmas is for those whose stories are as yet unwritten.

I live in a culture that exists after-Christendom: that is, the Church no longer enjoys a place of privilege in our society, even if some bishops still sit in the House of Lords...

but is very far from being post-Christian: that is, the Christian story still shapes our imagination and informs the stories we continue to write and tell...

a culture that has lost confidence in institutions: regular church attendance is low (though it rises dramatically at Christmas); politicians are despised; at the same time, this crisis in confidence has given birth to a resurgent interest in period dramas – stories that both reconstruct for us a more stable time that we cannot go back to, and deconstruct that apparent stability, showing us that there is nothing new under the sun...

but – to the consternation of the New Atheists – stubbornly resists a secular vision: see horoscopes and adverts for psychic readings in magazines; religious plurality; religious fundamentalism; culturally-Christian agnosticism...

Christmas is a time for telling stories.  This Christmas, the BBC showed a major new telling of The Nativity over four evenings in the week leading up to Christmas.  Then there is the annual tradition of the Dr Who Christmas special: in 2009, a self-sacrificing messianic tale; in 2010 a classic redemption story; both with explicit and unashamed reference to the Christian story, with Christmas as its starting-point.  Stories old, stories new: stories that inspire us, to journey on, perhaps in a renewed direction or with renewed determination, in our own story.

No particular feast, festival or commemoration is observed on the sixth, tenth, eleventh or twelfth days of Christmas.  Christmas is for those whose stories are yet to be written: because they have not yet taken place to be recorded, or because no-one – other than God – observed their lives closely enough to note it.  But just because a story is yet to be told does not mean that it will remain untold...

Christmas is for those whose stories are as yet unwritten...or re-written.