Coffee Theology

While Santas are delirious with excitement and Shoppers are seizing the day by the use of a credit card, Scrooges take a much more dim view of the Christmas season.  It is not that they are cruel and uncaring, like Ebeneezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens' famous story, but they see the darker side of life of which Santas are blissfully unaware and which Shoppers are trying to ignore.  For some people, Christmas is a 'humbug'. Perhaps someone close to them has died, whether that be recently or many years ago, and the 'happy family Christmas' images rub salt in the wound of their grief.  Perhaps money is very tight indeed, they have been refused credit and are simply wondering how they will put food on the table, let alone buy expensive Christmas gifts.  Perhaps they are depressed, and no amount of mince pies or carolling can lift the gloom in which they are living.  Perhaps life has been cruel to them, and other people's happiness is an insult. These unhappy ...

The second time I took the 'Four Kinds of Christmas' quiz on www.fourkindsofchristmas.com I came out as 'Shopper'.  I was a bit alarmed, as I sometimes like to think of myself as above all that material stuff.  But whenever anyone compliments me on an outfit I tend to launch into a tale of where I bought it and how much of a discount I got (thus justifying the purchase), or who bought it for me (thus exonerating myself)... So, yes, I am pretty enthusiastic about shopping.  This is not something of which I am proud. It's a commonplace to say that Christmas is 'too commercialised'.  It's hard for me to conceive of Christmas without Christmas shopping.  The adverts start in October and bombard us non-stop for many weeks.  We make lists: decide who needs a gift, who should receive a card, and how much it will all cost.  The shops become steadily more crowded and the consumer frenzy sets in.  I have to say, although this all sounds like hard w...

Last night, at our Advent Sunday Café Church service, we explored Glen Scrivener's 'Four Kinds of Christmas' www.fourkindsofchristmas.com .  This is an utterly brilliant resource which explores different ways we react and behave at Christmas.  You can take a quiz on the website to find out which is your default approach to Christmas.  The first time I took the quiz, I got 'Santa.'  Santa people LOVE Christmas.  They get really excited.  They love all the pretty lights and decorations, the Christmas music, the party food, the presents, the fun.  They put up their Christmas tree in October and start watching Christmas films as soon as the nights start drawing in.  This is definitely me.  I put my Christmas earrings in and my Santa hat on at the Christmas Fayre on 19th November and this will be my normal attire until 6th January... or for as long as I can get away with it.  Last year my husband had to insist that I take...

Over the past few years I seem to have become one of those people who luuurves Christmas.  I'm not quite sure why.  I used to get really irritated by the fact that mince pies and tinsel appeared in the shops in September, but these days Christmas can't start soon enough for me. Perhaps it's because I'm no longer a teacher, desperately hanging on until the end of the long autumn term, around 20th December.  Growing up, my mum was a teacher, and Christmas preparations never got underway until the schools broke up.  The run-up to Christmas was less than a week when I was young, and when I became a teacher, I too found it completely impossible to think about Christmas until the start of the school holidays.  I've now been out of teaching and working in churches for nearly ten years, and the rhythm is quite different.  Christmas is one of the high points of the church calendar, and churches start their Christmas planning and preparation months in advance. ...

For the last few years I have become more and more interested in ways in which the festival of Halloween might be redeemed.  Today, while preparing for the 'Life & Faith discussion group' I came across some thoughts expressed in much more eloquent terms than my half-formed ideas: Christmas… was deliberately superimposed on pagan midwinter festivals, [so] why not do the same with Halloween? After all, many consider that the feasts of All Hallows’ and All Saints’ were placed at their particular position in the year to ‘take over’ the Gaelic, end of Harvest festival, ‘Samhain’. Many consider that consumerism has done a pretty good job at reclaiming Christmas and is now seeking to take over All Hallows’, completely forgetting about All Saints’. Despite all of its confused messages, Christmas is still a brilliant outreach opportunity for the Church, and one that many of us take advantage of. Why don’t we see Halloween as an opportunity as well? Tim Hastie-Smith, Nat...

I was VERY worried about last Sunday's sermon.  We've started a sermon series on people's awkward questions about faith, and unfortunately quite a few of the questions submitted were about hell.  Who goes there.  Whether it's fair that God sends people there.  You know, really easy questions like that.  I often get nervous before preaching these days, but yesterday I quite literally broke out into a cold sweat as my nervous system went into meltdown and I hoped that, as has proved to be the case time and again, I would be all right once I started speaking.  For some reason it's the anticipation that gets me; once I start, I go into the zone.   It didn't help that I had been talking with some minister friends a few days before I was due to preach and, when they heard the topic I would be tackling, they looked very concerned and started giving me advice.  Oh dear, I thought, this is clearly something no one ever preaches on voluntarily.  Too la...

For a variety of reasons, back in May I came to the conclusion that I needed to do something about my weight.  I had never been a member of a slimming club before, or really tried dieting, even though there had been times over the years when I'd been unhappy about my weight.  Watching what you ate all the time and weighing yourself just seemed a really joyless way to live.  Just as I'd decided that I needed to take action, a flyer for Slimming World came through our letterbox.  I discovered that the nearest meeting was a five-minute walk from our house, so getting to the weekly weigh-in could not have been easier.   The issue of weight, fat and body image is an extremely tricky one for women.  I'm told that men struggle with this too, but I don't know much about it so I won't presume to comment.  As a feminist, I believe that society uses rules about appearance to control women and put them down; as a woman, there are little voices inside my head ...