Our Rector, Camilla works really hard and long, so I was grateful for this opportunity to help her with one small task and contribute this Christmas letter. Some of us send and receive a particular style of Christmas letter: the family updates and the hearty greetings, along the lines of “Little Eric has graduated from Primary school with a First, and Jemimah’s A levels stunned even the Board”. Others do not, but my preference is for a positive note which can update family and friends and maintain ties which may have been stretched by time and geography.
This Christmas is the first anniversary of my life-preserving surgery at St James Cancer Centre, Leeds for a tumour on my pancreas. My overwhelming gratitude to those brilliant surgeons, nurses, hospital support teams and my loving family and friends will be the subject of our personal letter, and we will share news of the family developments and activities too. We also hope to receive the annual updates, either handwritten or e-mailed, from friends who might be 100s of miles away.
In a Parish Letter we can thank all those in the Parish who support our Christian aims at the various Benefice churches through the seasons right up to Christmas. With all the services, meetings, fetes, events, tussles, problems, fund-raising, worries and mutual love and support, we can circulate news of the activities and outcomes to all our friends and share the happiness, and perhaps reminisce over people and times no longer with us.
There are great precedents in the Bible. Paul’s letters are so real for present-day readers: his first letter to the Thessalonians struck a chord with me when he said “Timothy has just arrived from Thessalonica, bringing good news of your faith and love….” Last month when researching some of the Remembrance files, I found my grandad had fought near Thessalonica and was not shipped back home until 1919 with a sprained ankle and a meagre pension. In the New Testament, Paul had a message of peace in his direct letter for those in that part of Greece: “we would urge you to admonish the careless, encourage the faint-hearted, support the weak, and to be very patient with them all.”
As we conclude all that Christmas planning, shopping, carolling and exertion, let us hope we can all enjoy a peaceful and blessed Christmas, happy that Jesus Christ was born in that stable and will be with us always. That is the positive news from this letter. May you also send and receive just the right sort of positive messages, cards, and letters this month, so you too can celebrate, remember, and feel encouraged for 2019.
Wishing you every blessing for a happy Christmas:
Ian Black
Churchwarden at Melsonby St James.