I love games with words. No doubt that says something about the way my mind works but I can gain lots of entertainment from deliberately mispronouncing or misusing words. We are in the season of nativity plays where the scope for misquotes is broad as junior thespians do their best with complicated words they only partly understand or which are in the wrong context. It happens in carol services too; why not let Mary, Joseph and the baby all cuddle up together in the manger?
Practising recently for a performance of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio a couple of us nearly lost the plot when we misread ‘Zion now offers her carols or praise’ and saw, instead, ‘carrots of praise.’ Bearing in mind the phrase comes from the section for the third day of Christmas a debate ensued about the needs of the animals involved in the nativity but soon moved on to reindeer and wondering what sort of carrots suit them best. It is amazing the diversions that can be created to avoid learning a difficult Bach fugue.
Many years ago I heard of someone amusing his family by giving thanks for the life of the bird, now dead, as he said grace at Christmas dinner. He did not intend his words to come across as they did but the amusement created means the sentiment was not lost.
Christmas is a wonderful blend of the serious and the light-hearted. Family fun and laughter cannot cancel out pain and suffering and yet the point of the incarnation is to usher into the world one who will grow to take on pain and suffering to give a future to fun and laughter in an existence unlocked from everything that goes wrong in life. Charles Dickens was more erudite than am I but he said something similar in his ‘A Christmas Carol.’ In another take of the old story, I am sure Jacob Marley would have advised Ebenezer Scrooge to lighten up and offer carrots where needed alongside the carols.
A prayer
Creator God, as we enter this last couple of weeks before Christmas, help us to see all sides of the story of life and the redemption offered by the Holy Child. As familiar readings, ancient carols and modern takes on the nativity come together give us the freedom to muddle up seriousness laughter with laughter and glimpse the rounded story of life that is the real story of history. Amen.