Happy birthday, Jesus!

Have you Christians ever realised that Christmas is actually a big birthday celebration? It’s the time we celebrate God’s birthday in his earthly form. Nobody really mentioned that to me over the past few weeks but suddenly the simplicity of it all, just struck me. In his sermon this morning, my Vicar warned us not to get caught up with the trappings of Christmas celebrations and forget the real meaning of Christmas.
My sister and I were planning to attend the midnight service on 24 Dec but couldn’t make it because we were hosting the clan dinner. But then I wondered, hey, if today’s Christmas and Jesus was born in the evening… if we wanted to be precise shouldn’t we be celebrating this evening instead!
I pity church workers and clergymen at this time of the year, because they have to work overtime on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day itself, not to mention the rehearsals before that. Which could be a reason why our morning service had a number of small errors.
For one, we would not really sing a song like “Come and join the celebation”, which was on page 2 of our Christmas service sheet. I was so amused with the typo. Like we’d all want to get ordained as monks and nuns!
And, for former members of St Georges who read this blog (all one/two of you), I have good news! We have finally stopped using the overhead projector! Welcome us out of the Stone Age! However, the new slides seemed to have been prepared in a hurry, as we were missing one page of lyrics, and so could not sing the final verse of a song. And, for another song, someone had inserted a verse in the middle of another verse. I’m sure these kinks will be worked out in time. This is all in the name of PROGRESS!!! Maybe a few years from now, we’ll start doing podcasts just like other churches, instead of saving sermons to an audio CD. I’ve tried to talk about podcasts but maybe my suggestion hasn’t reached the right ears yet.
[Update: Hey, even Queen Elizabeth II is podcasting her annual Christmas message now. Isn’t she the head of the Anglican church as well? ]
I have one more thing to say about our Christmas service this morning. Today, we all had Communion. Communion to me is something that can be shared with all believers. However, many years ago before I had decided to become a Christian, I attended church in Bristol sporadically and once was told by a more experienced Christian friend that I should not have taken Communion. I felt bad after that and remembered not to break that ‘rule’ until I got baptised. When I got baptised, I took Communion again. However, several months ago during my Confirmation (which in the Anglican church is the next step after Baptism) I was surprised that another member of the Church shook my hand then said, “Congrats, now you can take Communion too.”
Did that mean I couldn’t take communion even after getting baptised and I had done something ‘wrong’ again? Hurh! There are so many rules made by human beings that confuse me. In any case, today I caught myself behaving like my aforementioned friends, expressing concern that the guests we brought to church today were going to take Communion when I knew some were not believers and all were not Baptised yet. Where should I draw the line? In the end everyone just went up and took Communion anyway. I don’t intend to impose my own conceived rituals upon anyone, but wasn’t sure what was exactly the right thing (not) to do, in terms of man-made rules. Bleah! God, why do we need to complicate things like this?
Anyway, today we had a great clan lunch, then some of us enjoyed a 5+km workout at the Botanic Gardens where I used my Nike+ gear, which syncs wirelessly with my iPod Nano. More techy details in a later post.
Happy Birthday, Lord 🙂
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