The way i see it

gobsmacked by crazy ideas you have heard from people? And so often the more the person is so convinced in her/his opinion or belief, the zanier is the idea.

Most of us have been seduced into believing that in order to enjoy Christmas we have to buy X, Y and Z. We also have to go places and do things because if we don’t we might be missing out on something. The pressure keeps mounting.It’s as mad as that. But it proves an amazingly winning formula for people who are trying to divest us of our hard-earned money.

So now you might be saying that I remind you of Dickens’s Christmas Scrooge.Not at all. Christmas is a great time of year to remind ourselves of the extraordinary belief in the incarnation, God becoming human. The belief that points to a resurrection, an after-life, that has already tenuously begun, is in process and reaches a perfection beyond our understanding in communion with God.

Surely Advent is a far finer lead up to Christmas than the hysteria of Black Friday or Cyber Monday, all that frenetic shopping and driving into intolerable traffic jams.

Peace be with you this Christmas season.