So this is Christmas

It's Christmas Eve and I'm sitting in Mum and Dad's kitchen with a decent cup of coffee having just polished off a Bailey's and read my proper Advent study book. I drove down this morning (before the forecast heavy traffic) and spent the afternoon peeling carrots, making stuffing, catching up with my parents, playing with my niece (my nephew had far more important things to do). It's been a nice, stress-free start to Christmas proper.

So I thought I should just collect my Christmas thoughts, partly because being away from home means less easy access to a computer and therefore less blogging over the next week or so, and partly because I anticipate that the next few days will be a mass of activity and people and then the inextricable slide towards New Year and before we know it it'll be January and Advent will be a dim and distant memory.

I think that all-in-all the time for reflection that I'd hoped for has been a reality. This has definitely been the least manic build-up to Christmas I've experienced for years and that's felt really healthy and positive. I've appreciated being a punter at church but with the option of making the occasional contribution. It's been great to arrive at my parents with my health and sanity intact.

I'm not sure that I've had any major new revelations about God and the significance of Christmas, but that's OK. That said, I loved watching The Nativity this week. I thought the delicate balance of the human and the spiritual, the profound and the mundane were incredibly moving. I was impressed that the characters and their stories were engaging without being over-simplistic, and that many of the key underlying elements of the Biblical narrative were present without being signposted from three miles away. I'm glad they didn't bother with a CGI heavenly host - let's be honest, that could only ever have ended badly. I'm glad I recorded it because I know that I need to watch it again, to find the hidden things I missed this time and to prompt myself to think more deeply about the things that weren't quite as I imagined.

I have two questions about it though. The first is whether it was actually watched by anyone who isn't already either a card-carrying Christian or at least a regular churchgoer. If so, I'd love to know what they thought. The second is whether the BBC will have the guts to commission Tony Jordan to do the same with Easter as a four-parter over Maundy Thursday to Easter Sunday.

So it's Christmas and I'm about to sign off until 2011. But just a heads up on a couple of New Year's Resolutions I'm seriously considering. The first is to read the Bible in a year. The second is to go through the whole of January (and maybe beyond...) without shopping in a Big Four supermarket, using little independent shops as much as possible. Who's with me?