The Revd Writes…
One Christmas my father bought me a train set. It was all very splendid, a Hornby – and my father was very excited about it. He could hardly wait to help me unwrap it! I must have been no more than four years old and didn’t really appreciate the beauty of such intricate miniature engineering. Whilst my father ventured off to the other side of the room to carefully lay out the track, I vroom, vroomed the bright new engine across the carpet. Fibres from the carpet clogged the engine mechanism causing irreparable damage. The engine never even made it onto the track. My father was bitterly disappointed. I think it spoilt his Christmas. But it didn’t spoil mine. I was completely enthralled by my new matchbox series Batmobile with lifelike Batman and Robin figures. I never did really get into trains.
Many hours will be spent in the run-up to Christmas by thoughtful parents agonising over what presents to buy for children. Christmas is an opportunity to broaden the horizon, help a child begin to learn to tell the time by buying them their first watch or maybe it’s time to learn to ride a bike – difficult to wrap! A jigsaw puzzle of a world map engaged me in a whole new subject, geography – but trains were never going to be my thing. Years later my father would still lament, “I tried!” Christmas presents are often a risk. Even if someone has told you what they want, is it really what they wanted? The whole exercise is fraught with the potential for disappointment.
Yet a child’s rejection of a particular gift might just be an important step towards autonomy and increasing maturity. “I don’t really like this. I don’t want to play with it.”, is an affirmation that I have an opinion and am learning to choose. Expressing the right to choose, and learning to live with the consequences, is an important step for a child to make even though it may leave the parent wondering why they went to all the trouble in the first place. Rejecting some toys might just be as important as accepting others. “I like this. It’s me! I don’t like that. It is not me!”
Across the Churches of the Dever Valley this Christmastide there are a range of opportunities to come together to worship. Some will be drawn to the informal Christingle Service others will enjoy coming together to sing at Carol Services and yet others will prefer the quiet of a Midnight Service of Holy Communion. The Churches extend an open invitation to all to choose what feels right for them.
So, thank you for the book but I’m probably never going to read it, but I do like chocolate…
God Bless
Mark