Christmas Day

They say that Christmas is for the children. This has been the first Christmas day without little children in my life. The youngest was 25. All through my childhood I had siblings (except in 1943, but I spent that in my grandmother's house and I expect that there were cousins about. I was too young to remember). In 1967 when we were first married my parent's in-law spent Christmas with us and brought my wife's sister who was just a little girl. In 1994 the youngest child present was 14, and ever since we have had grandchildren with us. We will see the grandchildren on Wednesday, but this Christmas was child-free. It was also the most stress-free ever. Nobody wouldn't eat her dinner, or broke his toy, or cried because the battery was lacking.

Presents were unexpected and funny. I had an enormous kipper tie that is held on by an elastic band, a mounted football shirt of Aldershot Town, the club for which I was a mascot during the 1950-51 season and a full set of the Sharpe DVDs. I gave my wife specialty herbal teas, a really expensive jar of lemon curd, and a number of biographies including one of Philipp Bliss, the author of "Man of Sorrows".

We played 3 games of Scrabble, which everybody won except me. We opened a bottle of champagne that had been given to my daughter, the doctor, by a patient, and in between eating (the food was excellent) I worked on a new carol. I have never really liked the words of O Holy Night. The tune is wonderful, but it was origninally a French Carol, and the English words have always seemed a bit feeble.

This is what I have so far, based loosely on Romans Ch 5 with a touch of Galatians 4:4:

Still was the night
The silent world was waiting
The time was right
And the place was prepared.
Still in its sin
And full of hurt and hating
The world was weak,
But a rescue was dared.
God sent His Son
A baby frail and humble
In peril’s place,
To suffer in our stead.
Oh! Child of hope,
We tremble lest he stumble
In dangerous days.
Oh! Child, in manger bed,
You hold our hope;
Oh! Hope, hope of the world.

Obviously, futher verses to follow.