I dedicate my Christmas song today to three birthday celebrants. We wish a happy birthday to Lynn Greenwood who lives in Wilsden, West Yorkshire, and Helen Chambers who lives in Doncaster, South Yorkshire. Finally, we send birthday greetings to Adam Horrocks who lives in Oxenhope, West Yorkshire. Enjoy your special day, Lynn, Helen, and Adam.
Today’s Christmas song is ‘And So This is Christmas’. Also known as ’Happy Christmas (War is Over),’ this Christmas song was released in 1971 as a single by ‘John & Yoko, and over the years it has become one of the nation's favourite Christmas songs, especially with its central message: ‘War is over! If You Want It"
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Given the recent government directions that have severely restricted the seasonal meetings with family and friends this Christmas period, many of you will feel well and truly disheartened this year.
My dearly departed mother used to tell me, “Anyone can be happy, Billy, when everything in the garden is rosy!” She was bang on. All fair-weather gardeners may get to look at the flowers and eat the vegetables, but the fact that they grow at all has absolutely nothing to do with their horticultural contribution, and everything to do with mother nature. Hence, the world will carry on turning on its axis, even if we choose to stand still and have no part in it.
The unwelcome situation that the British nation finds itself in this Christmas week is something that nobody can smile about, but please, don’t give up smiling altogether. It is a senseless exercise (and some might argue a reckless one) to abandon hope and relinquish one’s capacity to remain rational and functionally calm in the storm, for to do otherwise, is merely to invite further calamity. Like the good gardener who does not abandon their allotment during inclement weather, like the shepherd who searches for the stray flock, and the farmer who fights to bring in a healthy harvest, we remain the captains of our own ship and the masters of our own fate, however perilous the seas we sail!
So, let me state here and now, nobody is cancelling my Christmas. Christ will still come into my life, whatever the weather or the government restrictions, and will hopefully bless our home with His permanent presence. We may all be in a place that we would rather not be this Christmas week, but the prerequisite condition of life is very much a lottery for all of us; ‘You’ve got to be in it to win it!’
So do not relinquish your right to be happy this Christmas. In the final analysis, bringing in the crop implies that one is still prepared to dig. So, stiffen your resolve, stand up straight, pick up that spade and start digging yourselves out of that hole of desperation where no life can survive and no hope can thrive.
We wish you a Happy Christmas and a better New Year in 2021 than you experienced in 2020.
Love and peace Bill and Sheila xxx
Today’s Christmas song is ‘And So This is Christmas’. Also known as ’Happy Christmas (War is Over),’ this Christmas song was released in 1971 as a single by ‘John & Yoko, and over the years it has become one of the nation's favourite Christmas songs, especially with its central message: ‘War is over! If You Want It"
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Given the recent government directions that have severely restricted the seasonal meetings with family and friends this Christmas period, many of you will feel well and truly disheartened this year.
My dearly departed mother used to tell me, “Anyone can be happy, Billy, when everything in the garden is rosy!” She was bang on. All fair-weather gardeners may get to look at the flowers and eat the vegetables, but the fact that they grow at all has absolutely nothing to do with their horticultural contribution, and everything to do with mother nature. Hence, the world will carry on turning on its axis, even if we choose to stand still and have no part in it.
The unwelcome situation that the British nation finds itself in this Christmas week is something that nobody can smile about, but please, don’t give up smiling altogether. It is a senseless exercise (and some might argue a reckless one) to abandon hope and relinquish one’s capacity to remain rational and functionally calm in the storm, for to do otherwise, is merely to invite further calamity. Like the good gardener who does not abandon their allotment during inclement weather, like the shepherd who searches for the stray flock, and the farmer who fights to bring in a healthy harvest, we remain the captains of our own ship and the masters of our own fate, however perilous the seas we sail!
So, let me state here and now, nobody is cancelling my Christmas. Christ will still come into my life, whatever the weather or the government restrictions, and will hopefully bless our home with His permanent presence. We may all be in a place that we would rather not be this Christmas week, but the prerequisite condition of life is very much a lottery for all of us; ‘You’ve got to be in it to win it!’
So do not relinquish your right to be happy this Christmas. In the final analysis, bringing in the crop implies that one is still prepared to dig. So, stiffen your resolve, stand up straight, pick up that spade and start digging yourselves out of that hole of desperation where no life can survive and no hope can thrive.
We wish you a Happy Christmas and a better New Year in 2021 than you experienced in 2020.
Love and peace Bill and Sheila xxx
