Christmas Dreams

Today is Christmas Day. I’ve been singing, playing and listening to Christmas songs for nearly a month now. ‘I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas’ has been repeated many times.

I’ve never experienced a white Christmas. I don’t think I ever shall. However much I dream of it, it won’t happen. Perhaps it’s impossible.  

I sometimes wonder whether the Christmas messages of hope, peace, joy and love are impossible dreams.

Yesterday, Christmas Eve, I popped down to our Men’s Shed. Little Bob had organised ‘bingo’. Older men playing bingo was some experience! Al, sitting next to me, won the first prize. He was told he’d won a Bentley. He said he needed a new car. He’d won a little dust cap from a Bentley tyre.

Big Bob won a prize. He was told he’d won a Bentley. It was a washer from a Bentley engine.

Perhaps we think we see the Christmas message, but only get a very small part of it.

I came home and continued to prune our big old apple tree. It’s a bigger job than I’d anticipated. The tree’s grown much too big and I needed to be ruthless with my saw. A couple of sizeable branches fell next door and had to be retrieved. Hopefully pruning will be completed soon.

I sometimes wonder whether we’ve let Christmas become too big, growing a little more each year. Because it’s overgrown and unmanageable it needs to be cut back.

Yesterday afternoon we went to our Christmas Eve carol service. Twenty-few-year-old Zoe was there with her boyfriend. We learnt that she’s expecting a baby. There’s a lot of excitement… prospective parents, grandparents, great-grandparents…

We heard familiar readings and sung well known carols. Somehow the birth of the Christ-child took on a new reality. Overgrown-apple-tree Christmas was cut back; Bentley-Christmas, that previously I’ve only seen a small part of, could be appreciated in greater detail; the apparently impossible white-Christmas dreams of hope, peace, joy and love become not only possible but a reality.