What makes Christmas for you? Kids, family together, parties, helping others, trees, lights, tinsel, food, drink, carols, nativity scenes, services, cards, presents, Binge-TV, snuggled up in front of the fire, etc. Like me you may be gutted about the removal of the Christmas window for our celebrations.

This Constrained Covid Christmas will be like no other, but let’s remember those for whom Christmas simply rubs their face in the sorrow of loss: a loved one departed, dream dashed, business lost, job evaporated, ability eroded (even erased), fear intensified, darkness deepened, hope gone. Let’s look out for those ‘Home Alone’, cut-off from company and comfort, and be ready to share what we have with those without. Why not echo St Francis of Assisi’s prayer:

Make me a channel of Your peace
Where there is hatred, let me bring Your love
Where there is injury, Your pardon Lord
And where there’s doubt, true faith in You

Make me a channel of Your peace
Where there’s despair in life, let me bring hope
Where there is darkness, only light
And where there’s sadness, ever joy

Oh Master, grant that I may never seek
So much to be consoled as to console
To be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love with all my soul

Make me a channel of Your peace
It is pardoning that we are pardoned
In giving to all men that we receive
And in dying that we’re born to eternal life

To realistically channel such Peace we need ‘peace within’ ourselves, otherwise our kindness runs on fumes, and we burn-out. My experience is that Jesus is the ‘Missing Piece’ of life’s mega-jigsaw puzzle, source of ultimate peace without and within. The first Christmas saw God Almighty humbly, without a fuss, stepping into our neighbourhood: come to lift our lockdown blues, change the channel to Good News, helping hand when we can’t cope, with the message “There is Hope!” When we humbly receive Jesus’ Peace we’re armed to pass peace, hope and love onto others.

A Peaceful Christmas to and through you my friend!