The Chosen Day

What I love about Christmas is what it teaches me.

It teaches me that we, all of us, can take an ordinary day - just an ordinary day - and imbue it with meaning. We can create traditions around it, and we can celebrate it, and we can treat it as the most special, the most wonderful, the most exciting day of the year. We can choose to make something ordinary something special - just because we choose to. Some give this day a meaning from religious tradition, even though know one knows the precise day of the birth of Jesus - this day was chosen to be that day. Chosen. Selected. Some give this day meaning from a secular point of view as a day of family and a day when the hearts of children are uppermost in our minds. But no matter how it is seen, when I look out my window I see a grey day, with the sun giving little light and little warmth. It would be a day, any other time of year, that would be drab, featureless.

This teaches me that we have the power, collectively, to determine something special, something to be celebrated, just because we want to - and because we want to we call will it into being. We can tell stories about it, we can make it part of our faith, we can make it part of who we are as a society.

Would that this could be done again. Would that we could determine, collectively, that we will honour and we will celebrate the diversity of our families, the complexities of our communities, the differences between us all. Would it be that we had an intense desire for everyone to be at the table, everyone have a voice to share. Would it be that this was our collective desire.

Would it be that we could will it into being.

Would it be that we would want prejudices to fall away.

Would it be that we would make ourselves vulnerable to inclusiveness.

In a few moments children are going to be racing around me excited that it's Christmas morn, they won't notice that it's a grey and cold day. They will notice only that this day has been made special, they will participate in a day chosen to be special. May they be the ones to take this day, make it bigger, make it longer, stretch it into cloth that can be set upon the table of humanity, and may they cook the first feast of inclusively, the first feast where none are less, none are more and none live in want of warmth, of love and of belonging.