Our local supermarket recently underwent a huge overhaul and
has just reopened in time to attract Christmas shoppers and, with good
reductions and great promotion, they have done that in spades! Last Saturday, the January sales-type fever and volume of
customers had subsided to some extent but it was still pretty busy. As a flower
shop had just opened inside, each lady shopper was given a red rose – nice
touch! And there were loads of balloons for children to pick up but were mainly
lying abandoned. I remembered a young neighbor, Marina, was quite ill with a
horrible, lingering ‘flu, had been off school for days, was missing her mates
and feeling pretty down. I scooped some balloons up and, at the village
butcher’s grabbed a handful of the sweeties he kindly keeps in a jar for
customers.
Thus armed, on the way home,
we stopped off to see Marina, her sister, Maria, and little neighbours,
Achilleas and Olympia. Maria’s pinched, wan little face beamed when she saw the
balloons – every child loves them - but
when I told them all that I had met Father
Christmas who had expressed concern about a young neighbor of ours who was
sick, their imaginations were ignited. Of course both the balloons and sweets
served as proof I’d met him and that these were ‘interim’ gifts so that they
would be good children and get well for his visit to them very soon. So, good
deed of the day done- with great assistance from the supermarket and the
butcher!
Christmas is coming and a friend suggested we attend a carol service run by the Anglican
Church in Greece. Now I have to ‘fess up and state from the outset that in the
main the Church Established does little to
nourish my spiritual needs, but when I’m back in Scotland I do try to
take in a Protestant service for the good of my soul. I like how our ministers
act as spiritual guides, showing the relevance of the scriptures to daily
issues we face, as teachers, leading us on the moral path in the complex
culture of today. As we took our seats,
I saw before me religious symbols of
the ecumenical, all-embracing nature of our meeting: the cross, the menorah - the
seven-branched Jewish candle-holder, and the Greek Orthodox equivalent of the bronze
sand-tray to hold the votive candles.
Now for some Protestants, the Calvinistic aversion to the cross – even an empty one – still holds;
they see it smacking of ‘papal remnants’ …..
and a little idolatry. Certainly, as I sat contemplating it, it struck
me as a rather macabre, mawkish object; in fact I felt such a sense of distancing
from my surrounds I realized the honest response would be to leave. But then something happened to change my mood:
the organist struck up the first words of the Lutheran carol Away
in a Manger. Immediately I
was transported to memories of being a little girl whose role in the primary
school concert was to sing this carol solo. Flooding back came that age of
innocence, to my absolute, comforting belief in the Christmas story, reflected
in the words of the hymn:
Be near me, Lord Jesus; I ask thee to stay
Close by me for ever and love me, I pray.
Bless all thy dear children in thy tender
care
And fit us for heaven to live with thee there.
Those memories brought the sense of engagement that had been
missing and I was glad I stayed, especially to catch up with old friends and
share some mulled wine and mince pies with them - isn’t that what it is all
about? Remembering the joy on Marina’s face on receiving the balloon and sweets
from Santa, I realise that whatever our logical response to it, the Christmas
story can be emotionally therapeutic, a source of warmth in the bleak
mid-winter.
As the end of term
for our art classes approached, our teacher, Evangelia, invited us, her
students, for coffee. Her house is really like a gallery, full of the really
fascinating pieces she has created. Now
you can imagine that if the cross can evoke a negative response in me, then
icons are really not my thing, but Evangelia’s oil-on-wood of Jesus of
Nazareth in the 1977 Zeffirelli film had me enthusing. I have been a fan of Robert Powell since watching him in the
television series Doomwatch in 1971. He has a wonderful voice and, as you can
see here, his eyes aren’t half bad either! Evangelia kindly allowed me to copy her
work here - I am sure it will impress you as it did me.
We’ve just come back from a wee trip to the region of Naoussa, one of Greece’s grape-growing
areas. So it was fitting to see that they sometimes decorate their Christmas trees
with ………. wine bottles!
And on that note –
with a hint of cranberry and cinnamon:
Cheers! Merry
Christmas one and all!!
