Among other traumatic memories of my childhood was that of Christmas 1945, when a precocious child called Pat Pitchfork broke the secret that there was no Santa Claus.
I still remember the very place she informed me.
"How could this be?" I asked.
My father put out the fire on Christmas Eve so that the old man would not get scorched coming down the chimney and, besides that, he always drank his milk and ate his biscuit that were left out for him.
Scornfully Pat replied that only babies believed such a story. It was my Dad play acting.
The evidence of the hoax was provided the next day when my sister Anne showed me where the presents were hid in my parent's wardrobe.
So much for Father Christmas but not for the Christmas story.
In my seventy years a host of atheists, agnostics, infidels, intellectuals and liberal preachers have tried to break down the stable door and prove that the story of the Virgin birth of the Son of God was a myth.
They have come and they have gone: Hitchins, Huxley, Dawkins and Russell, but this year I will be singing carols and exulting in the great Advent story with the same joy as I did as five year old nearly seven decades ago.
I hope you will be too.
Hallelujah for Christmas.
Ian
No comments:
Post a Comment