My favourite NZ native tree… the Pohutukawa, metsiderosis excelsa, is known as the New Zealand Christmas Tree. This is exactly the time of year that it comes into blossom, and together with its supposedly Christmas colours of red and green, it is not surprising that it is given that name. I have them growing around my home. This one here is still quite a baby, standing barely thrice my height but expected to reach a good 20 metres or more… provided the local city council doesn’t send their tree-hating so-called “gardeners” out to lop it about!

You could be forgiven for thinking that Judah slept right through this Christmas, there being no other posts to my Journal this month except for the one on the first, but that is not so. I was awake alright!

The days here have been long ones, and busy ones too. The dawn chorus is already going strong by first light, around 5.00 am, with several resident Tuis leading the choir. This lovely native bird, Prosthemadera Novæ Zealandiæ, has reinhabited suburbia now that the culling of opossums, the introduced Aussie pest, has given them back their territories. Much of their song is outside the range of human hearing, but we are given recitals of much chortling, chuckling, warblings, sneezes, and melodious motets that go on endlessly until late at night when the Moreporks, our native owl, takes over to repeat its name through until sunrise.

Living with native bush on my property, there is little chance of remaining asleep throughout summer! But Christmas did come at a rush and was over almost before I could say Hallelujah.

With a few Vicarly words of encouragement, I managed to get myself to the Midnight Communion Service on Christmas Eve, my first for a best forgotten number of years. I’m so glad that I did. It was a wonderful occasion, one that I wont miss again, I promised myself. My first for ages…

In these politically correct days where the words “reason for the season” are barely whispered so as not to give offence (no mind the offence given our Creator!) it takes some courage, or a Christian conviction, to look behind the secular holiday traditions (why red and green for Christmas, do you suppose?) and realize that Jesus was not God’s Plan B for mischievous humans. Our mischief was predicted long before we even came into being, long before the beginning of time. Jesus was born to be killed, made incarnate to redeem, and that was Plan A right from the start.

Sounds engineered, doesn’t it? I don’t personally think so… more like a wise, omniscient Being saw way into the future and arranged His ducks in a row, so to speak. Not just omniscient either, but One who cared enough about His creatures to work out a way whereby love redeems creation. All this can take a bit to get one’s head around, but that is really what Christmas is all about. Lose the occasion under the red and green, silver and gold, sparkles and tinsel, avarice, gluttony, hate, anger and family violence, but it is still there regardless… the Saviour who was born in humble circumstances, was mocked and tortured for our transgressions, but loved us enough to forgive us, sanctify and glorify us with Himself… if only we care enough to follow Him to the foot of the cross, to kneel at the throne of God.