Pray for the City Notes:Ten Great Christmas Ideas

Some years ago I was kayaking my way down the Nymboida River in northern NSW. I wasn't all that good at it but enjoyed the risk and the challenge immensely. I came to a left hand bend in the river and, as happened regularly, I tipped out. The canoe didn't have floatation stuff in side and as water began to enter the craft I suddenly realized I was being sucked down in a whirlpool that was much stronger than my power to swim and hang onto the boat. I must have been between six and ten feet under the surface when I realized I had to make a decision to let go the boat OR drown.

I am still breathing at this moment because of that simple albeit desparate, split second decision. As I write I can still feel the tension between the idea of losing the kayak and drowning. I looks very simple from this distance and the wonder is that I should have had to consider which decision I would take. The kayak didn't belong to me and the guy who built it had just finished it. I was very embarrased to clamber back to where I had left him on the bank and tell him the news, but grateful that I was able to clamber.

I think Christmas has become a little like that rather innocent looking bend in the river. On the surface there was much to rejoice about. A few feet under the surface, death was lurking.

The following ten ideas are ones I think may keep us out of the trouble that lurks below the surface of a culture that includes a few Christmas carols in the park and the opportunity to see a few people you haven't seen for a while. Lurking below the surface is a whirlpool of "death" created by the materialistic madness we are sold thousands of times a day at this time of the year.

I want to start a Christmas revolution. I have heard the famous quotation of a Chinese proverb by Adlai Stevenson (United Nations address in 1962), "It's better to light a candle than curse the darkness." So here are a few candles that may well light a brighter candle this Christmas time.

TEN GREAT CHRISTMAS IDEAS

1. Put a nativity scene in your community space. Take a little nativity scene or something that places the real reason for the season as a proclamation around you. I know you might risk being told that its polically incorrect, but Jesus didn't really command us to be politically correct, he commanded us to speak liberating truth. Put something on your desk, in the back window of your car, in your house etc.

2. Become a conscientious objector to the gross immorality of many Christmas functions. This year marriages will be damaged, families will be shamed and people will degrade each other just because they attend the never ending string of so called Christmas parties. I am all for building better relationships and I am totally committed to celebration, but getting drunk and/or ending up morally compromised is a celebration of nothing other than darkness. The wages of sin are always stealing something, killing someting and destroying something. Jesus is the reason for the season. It's a celebration of light, not darkness.

3. Make your neighbours a little Christmas cake. A couple of friends of mine decided to cook little cakes and wrap them nicely with a little home made card and took the opportunity to conn ect with all their neighbours by giving them the personal gifts. It was a Christmas act that paid dividends for the rest of the year as their friendships were built to a new level. It wasn't enough to make people feel bad. It wasn't printed,impersonal computer derived or empty. It was small and loving.

4. Make a decision to do a ONE FOR ONE gift deal with your families. Put all the names in hat and have a list of all the people in the hat. Draw out a name and put it next to the first name on the list until everyone is down to give one other person a modest gift ($50 or so). That way you won't end up buying rubbish for people who don't need what you buy. That way you won't have the emotional drain of figuring out what to buy people who don't need anyting. Each person can then ask the member they are buying for, what they really do need. Take the mystery out of it and leave behind the plunge into debt or heedless extravagance.

5. Get the TEAR fund catalogue. With this catalogue you can buy anthing from a goat to a water tank for people in the two thirds of the world where they really do have deep and essential needs. Just think of the joy of giving a present that a village or a family will be blessed by every day of the year, not a bunch of presents that will be broken before new year's day. Look it up on the Web: http://www.tear.org.au/giftcatalogue/action/songs.php

6. Get your extended family to sponsor a Compassion/World Vision child instead of giving each other presents. Just imaging what it would be like for a whole family to put together to make up the $500 or so that it takes to sponsor a child. There are great organizations that do this and it immediately relieves everyone of the normal burden of buying for each other. This child can receive the love from all kinds of members of a single family group. Untold light will shine every day for years.

7. Round up the whole of your local family and organize them to go to church together this Christmas. Make it a family event by putting a gathering at the start or end of it. But press those members who don't go to church to make the effort. People are more open at times like this. Why not make use of that openness.

8. Have a birthday breakfast for Jesus on Christmas morning. Why not preceed the self obsessed present opening time with a family act that honours Jesus on his "birthday." In our family we have breakfasts for family members on their birthday. We have a special but not elaborate nosh up with bacon and eggs and juice and croissants and a few things like that. You can sing happy birthday to Jesus if your bold enough. Why shouldn't the members of your family do things like this for each other on their birthdays but not for Jesus?

9. Invite a lonely person to your household for your Christmas celebrations. Share the love of your family with someone who doesn't have family love on Christmas day. Invite more than one if you can. For some people just the normal experience your household offers would be worth more than money could buy.

10. Make a gift to Jesus on his birthday of your total and uncompromised allegience. Give your life to Jesus and make that commitment your birthday gift to HIM>

Brian Medway