Category: Christmas
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The Frustrations of Travelling – What’s New?
If you think the 70 mile Christmas trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem, by donkey and foot, couldn’t have been much fun, compare it with the 50 mile trip from Edinburgh to Dundee in 1848 ….. You took train no.1, from Edinburgh Waverley down to Granton harbour on the south bank of the river Forth. You…
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The ‘Sober’ Truth about the Solstice
The English word ‘solstice’ comes from the Latin ‘solstitium’, meaning the ‘Sun standing still’. Around the 20th/21st December, the Sun slumps down to lie at its lowest point above the horizon. It needs a few days to ‘chill out’ before beginning, so slowly at first, to clamber its long way back to higher things, with…
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Luke’s Nativity ‘Extras’
Luke’s Nativity Story begins earlier than Matthew’s, with the priest Zechariah, whose aged wife Elizabeth hasn’t been able to conceive a child. One day, while carrying out his duties, “an angel from the Lord” appeared, and told him that his wife would bear a child, who must be called John – “a great servant of…
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That Christmas ‘Star’
One Christmas ‘tradition’ that continues to amuse me, is the annual attempt to cobble up credible ‘explanations’ of the nature and behaviour of the ‘Christmas Star’. It appears only in Matthew’s Gospel but (all credit to the writer’s imagination) it never fails to make an ‘other worldly’ impact on readers of his story. In the…
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‘O little town of Bethlehem’
This is my favourite Christmas carol, though I’m no longer ‘traditionally’ religious, and believe Jesus was born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem. Why, some might ask, do I find this carol moving and meaningful? The reason is that its words and music symbolise and energise deep-seated archetypal contents in my psyche, which have profound meaning irrespective…
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A Boring Christmas Genealogy?
Why does the Bible contain lists of ancestors which are hardly enthralling? One, in 1st Chronicles, is 9 chapters long, making the book chronic-ally unappealing! Their purpose is establishing legitimacy. The king in Jerusalem, had to be a proven descendant of King David; a Temple priest had to be a descendant of Aaron, Moses’ brother. …
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Matthew’s Debatable Verse
There are just two ‘nativity’ accounts, at the beginning of the Gospels called Matthew and Luke. Neither is referred to again in the New Testament, which nowhere else says anything about Jesus’ birth. The word “virgin” occurs only in Matthew, in a quote from Isaiah 7:14. Here’s a literal rendering of that verse from the…
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The Three Nativity Stories
Have you realised that there are actually three Nativity Stories? The first is in Matthew’s Gospel, which includes a guiding star in the sky; an arrival of “wise men” from the east; King Herod’s slaughter of babies and toddlers; the escape of the ‘holy family’ to Egypt; their eventual attempted return to their “house” in…
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