Don’t let them rain on your Christmas

For us Christmas is usually a quiet family affair anyway. Even if it was not, Matt Hancock, the Scrooge of Christmas present, the Scrooge of Christmas yet to come, would not be allowed to rain his humbug on our parties. Don’t let him rain on yours. Ask yourself how many people you know who are suffering from Covid-19 (not diagnosed by the grossly inaccurate PCR test but actually suffering from a virus in this fraudulent attempt to control everybody and lock us all down).

The police are not going to want to be breaking up parties and ruining people’s festivities as long as there is no brawling or objectionable behaviour. So ignore the Downing Street buffoons. That’s my advice. Max wants to say the same thing wearing his reindeer headgear among the plants.

In the part of South Birmingham where I now live people have been busy making merry their houses and streets, showing the nasty people in government a middle-finger for their nonsense impositions. I’ve been out taking a few photographs so you can share in the ingenuity of the displays. It reminded me of illumination displays we used to pay to see.

Blackpool today is a ghost-town and the famous Golden Mile devoid of shoppers even in the middle of the day. In the seasons when Blackpool illuminations were something to be seen, late autumn and early winter, I don’t recall seeing displays more enchanting than these.

As young boys we used to go to Bolsover illuminations in Nottinghamshire. I guess there are still a few who remember the displays in the grounds of Bolsover’s Sherwood Lodge. Dougie Yeomans, who lived in a prefab at the bottom of Sandy Mount drove a coach of miners’ families from Harworth and Bircotes to see illuminated cardboard cut-outs of cows and stags, huts and windmills, fairies and other primitive graphic images among the trees of the lodge. Coming back (possibly 1953/4} Dougie Yeomans killed a rabbit caught in the headlights of the bus. Apart from that for us children the day out was magical.

Yet today there are even brighter displays in the streets, and they are free.

Christmas every year can be a pleasure for all. And children love it – as we loved it when we were young. The illuminations might be more impressive today. They might even be as impressive as the Northern Lights. Yet there is a message of old which talks about the light of the world being born in Bethlehem in Judea during the reign of Herod the king. It talks too of wise kings following a star to the place where Jesus was born. As we celebrate Christmas with all its trimmings and rich food we here, and Christians the world over, will be remembering the holy birth and the message of peace to all. Have a lovely Christmas. God bless!