Christmas in July

Apparently in Australia, Christmas in July is a thing. Because Christmas falls in their summer some people want to get a feel for how all those festivities brighten up the grim mid-winter. When I first went to Australia 2 years ago, we left the UK on Christmas day, having cooked Christmas dinner for 20, packed our bags and ran onto the plane. We didn’t get time to process what had just happened until after take off when we were tucking in to our Christmas-pudding-flavoured ice cream. I was so looking forward to seeing how they reinterpreted the birth of Christ in the Southern Hemisphere, but when we got there it was all Santas sweating away in red velour.

Anyway, in order to get up to speed with what God’s doing and saying at the moment, I’m racing through what I should’ve written 6 months ago, so let’s go to Christmas. In July. I’m not even sorry.

One of the biggest questions we had when we started our Sabbath year was, ‘what does it look like to do Christmas at rest?’ The Salvation Army, maybe more than most other denominations, is notorious for being crazy busy at Christmas time. So many corps, and especially officers, burn out in December, with hours of collecting, toy appeals, dinners. Xander and I usually go quite hard in December, mostly because we love it. I love caroling, it’s such a great opportunity to sing out over people the good news, to intercede, to prophesy. And then people pay you for it. People’s hearts are softer at Christmas, more responsive to the gospel. They love to hear it from us. It’s a real thin place of connecting people to God. So, I love it. We decided that we would do caroling for proclamation and evangelism, but not for fundraising purposes.

We pulled together an open air Carol Service, with a brass band and Banbury Christians Together. It was a great opportunity to get out on the streets, that’s not something we’ve historically been good at. We gave out candy canes from our buckets, instead of using them to collect money from people. 'Praying Jesus fills your heart with joy this Christmas, love from Banbury Christians Together'. It was a privilege to speak God’s love over the town and to bless people with sweets and Christmas hope.

We prayed in a cook for our Christmas Day community dinner. Last year we cooked it ourselves, it was insane, and we knew we just shouldn’t do it again. God sent us a wonderful man and his daughter, who rocked it. They catered for 40. 50 turned up, and it was perfect. We had an amazing team of volunteers, who miraculously were all perfectly matched to the tables they were hosting. There was a real sense of family, of love, fun and acceptance, lots of racing Rudolphs, lots of Shloer and far too many bad jokes. It was a truly peace-filled, beautiful day.

It was a great opportunity to experience Christmas a little bit slower, to see at work the truth that Jesus came and saved the world, just by being. His primary means of Salvation that first Christmas was to just come and be. As a baby, there was nothing Jesus could do other than allow other people to meet his needs. This Christmas proved it to be so true that we do our best work when we stop working and allow God to move, give space for him to do the things he intended in the first place.

That’s the key difference between busyness and fruitfulness. So often we tire ourselves out, work ourselves into the ground doing the things we think are good ideas, the things we think will please God, rather than stopping to give space for partnering with the plans of God’s heart.

We went to Australia again this year. Having learned the error of our ways, we waited for a week after Christmas before we left. We spent a glorious week slobbing at my parent’s house, eating too much food, watching too much telly, processing the month we’d just lived through, before we jetted off to the sunshine, with Christmas well and truly over. Here's a sunshiny New Year's Day photo, just for fun!