Click on picture/movie and listen as you read.

I realize that for me, Christmas – at least much of the romance of it, involves a cold, wintery, northern clime such as we ‘enjoy’ in Ontario, Canada. The ambience is very much unlike the original settings – in Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem, Egypt and other parts and places of the ancient Middle East and beyond.

But every culture, just as every person, must incorporate the Message of Christmas into their own context, story-line and setting.

The First Noel, even using the French term instead of ‘Christmas’ is one of my favourite carols, and it gets the original story-line correct, mirror-reflecting its essence.

Even when the carol sung in English my ‘native’ tongue, some of the phrasing is ancient - King Jamesy. Viz – ‘They look-ed up . . .’ - instead of look’d. We all try to understand the wonder, to say it right. Though painted or otherwise portrayed in poetry, prose and picture, the Story still grabs us – and won’t let go.

Whether surrounded by spruce or balsam tree (or fake plastic, died green or pink, even, with palms displaced and fronds unknown, we incorporate and enculturate, assimilate and propagate the Good News - that, in Jesus, God has come in flesh to our planet, bending low, sweeping down that we might be lifted up in the now and taken up in the future to be evermore with Him.

Jesus, as someone has put it, became what we are that we might become what He is.

Thanks be to God!