To The POINT
With
Rev Philip Bradford

Christmas, is spending time with the family

A RECENT survey of how people were planning to spend Christmas revealed that while only one in three were planning to attend a church service, 95 per cent were planning to spend time with their family.

Christmas Day is one day in the year when we don’t like being alone. So even though the family Christmas gathering may force you to sit alongside that brother-in-law whose political views are a little to the right of Genghis Khan, or to share a Christmas cracker with the aunty who still uses your childhood nickname, you still turn up.

Christmas in Australia means every kind of family, from the fully functional to the madly dysfunctional, tries to get together. That is why airports are crowded on Christmas Eve and the roads are full on Christmas morning as everyone around the country gathers to share a family meal, be it a traditional roast or barbeque on the beach.

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THE BIBLICAL account of the birth of Jesus also involved both family and travel. Luke tells us that Joseph the carpenter in Nazareth had to journey the 130 km to Bethlehem with his young fiancée, Mary, in order to be registered. The registration was an edict of Caesar Augustus and required that everyone go to the town of their birth to be enrolled, probably for taxation purposes.

When Mary and Joseph arrived they discovered to their dismay that all the inns had no vacancy signs and things looked rather desperate.

Tradition has it that they found shelter in a stable, but it may well have been the downstairs room in a house that was normally used for animals.

I’ve often wondered that if Joseph was in his family’s hometown, why couldn’t they find some relatives to stay with?

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PERHAPS THE answer is that Mary, his fiancée, was heavily pregnant and there was the whiff of scandal surrounding them. Relatives may have shunned the young couple and turned them away from their door.

Today we speak of Mary and Joseph and Jesus as ‘the Holy Family’, but it’s unlikely that any of their contemporaries would have used such language to describe them.

Thus the baby Jesus ended up being cradled in an animal feed trough, “with the poor and mean and lowly”, as the well known carol puts it. It was God’s way of showing that he is present even in the most wretched and miserable circumstances of life.

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AT CHRISTMAS, Christians affirm the belief that the baby born in Bethlehem in such humble surroundings over 2000 years ago was God’s great gift to us, the Divine Word made flesh.

Jesus came to reveal God’s love to us and to make it possible for our relationship with God to be restored. That is what we celebrate at Christmas, so on behalf of the churches of the Gladesville, Hunters Hill Inter Church Council may I wish you all a very happy and safe Christmas and invite you to join us as we celebrate the birth of the saviour.

* Rev PHILIP BRADFORD is Rector, Anglican Parish of Hunters Hill

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