Introducing... Searching for Christmas
A Counting Down to Chrismas update
Hi all
So much for monthly updates! Since my last email in July it’s been a bit of a challenging time for me and my immediate and extended family with one unexpected thing after another including sickness, surgery, care support, respite and recovery. In the background while everything else has been going on, I’ve still been working on Counting Down to Christmas.
I’m excited and ready to share more about what this year will look like. Starting on 1st December and ending on Christmas Day there’ll be a daily post available to read on Substack or access through your email.
Each day the post will be fairly short and progressively lead us towards Christmas Day. As in previous years there’ll be a few short sections to read, reflect and respond to. I’ll be sending a sample for what a day will look like in my next email. This year it’s for all ages to enjoy - this doesn’t mean it’s for children only, but just that there’ll be content included that will appeal to children as well as adults.
The main content of the daily email will be behind a paywall so make sure you sign up for the annual plan to receive the resource daily through December. I’ve hugely discounted this year’s Counting Down to Christmas due to the cost of living crisis that’s affecting many subscribers. Keep reading for the full subscription information towards the end of this post and a way you can be involved this year in a collaborative contribution.
But first, let’s find out more about what this year’s Countdown will include.
Introducing Searching for Christmas
A well known story
I’ve been remembering a midnight Christmas Eve Church service from my childhood. The darkness was illuminated with tiny candles. The singing voices of those gathered could have been the sound of an angelic chorus. I was filled with awe and wonder and excitement despite the tiredness from staying up so late. Then the minister stood up to say his few words. He was brief. Looking out at the gathered faithful, he solemnly confessed that he knew we’d heard the Christmas story before, and he had nothing new to add. He sat down again. There was a strange silence until the gathered faithful sang a final Christmas carol, before going on their way home to their beds, confused and subdued.
I’m still waiting for that to be my problem – running out of things to say about Christmas. I’ve been writing Christmas reflections for many years. Every year I find myself surprised by a fresh thought and experiencing a fresh moment of awe and wonder. Sometimes it happens in my writing process, at other times it happens in the sharing of the writing with others. Most years it happens more than once and usually it happens when I least expect it. I can’t imagine ever running dry of inspiration.
The thing with the Christmas story, that gets me every single year, is that it is the story of God-With-Us. Emmanual. God becoming one of us. This is not just any story. This is our story. This is God’s story. It’s not a story that we ever get to the end of understanding. As much as some would like to wrap up Christmas into a neat and tidy box and call it understood, how can we possibly think that we can fully get to understand the depths and breadth of God-With-Us? To me, being open to God-With-Us is at the heart of Christmas.
A childlike openness
It intrigues me that Christmas can be right in front of us and yet we can completely miss it. I’ve called our Advent Calendar, ‘Searching for Christmas’. This year I’m trying to strike an all-age balance, appealing to those who already know the story and those who are new to the story. For those who don’t have children, aren’t children themselves and/or the story is known inside out, I invite you to dig in deeper with me. On the surface the daily emails will have a childlike feel, but, search a little further and there’s more to discover.
I love listening to small children and their questions as they make sense of the world around them. They’re uninhibited in their search for meaning. They experience a sense of awe and wonder at the smallest of things. They’re curious and relentless. Their wisdom is breathtaking. Sometimes the questions don’t make sense to us who are older (and wiser?). Sometimes we perceive words used to preface the question are wrong, like, “Why is Christmas?” or “Who is Christmas?” instead of perhaps the expected, “What is Christmas?” or “When is Christmas?” At other times the questions themselves seem to us to be either too big or too small to answer like, “Where is God?” or “Who is Baby Jesus?”
The art of a good question
This year’s Counting Down to Christmas will include lots of questions. Some may surprise, some may delight, some may make us ponder, some may make us wonder. I hope in this search for Christmas we will all found ourselves closer to God-With-Us.
This isn’t going to be an investigation of the scientific variety. I’m not looking for ‘proof’ that the Christmas story as recorded in the Bible is a true and accurate record of factual events. Counting Down to Christmas is about making sense of God-With-Us in our own lives both at Christmas and in all days, finding hope and wonder even in troubled times, and living out the Christmas story alongside others.
We may have searched previously for Christmas in our own lives, and consider we’ve found already found Christmas, rendering this topic unnecessary, but my view for my own life and faith journey is that the search never ends. There is mystery, awe and wonder in the search.
I love the imagery of opening a door on an Advent Calendar. Christmas is about opening doors and stepping out into new experiences, thoughts and discoveries. And so, I’m inviting you to open doors as we head towards Christmas and to come to searching for Christmas again with me this year.
Meet Detective Sam T. Sirhc and friends
Detective Sam T. Sirhc will be on the job to help us search for Christmas and the daily writing will largely be in her first person ‘case notes’ as she searches for Christmas and puzzles away on her seemingly simple Christmassy questions.
Five things you should know about Detective Sam
Her birthday is on Christmas Day.
She is very curious and loves puzzles.
She likes looking at things from different angles and perspectives.
Her last name is pronounced ‘Search’.
She has a cat called Leon. (This is Noel spelt backwards)
If you’re wondering about her unusual last name I invite you to follow your curiousity and puzzle over this for a little bit and see what you can find.
The Christmas Friends Club and Leon
Detective Sam has asked four of her friends to help her search for Christmas. She’s thinking of them as her expert witnesses. She calls them her Christmas Friends Club because they love being involved in all things Christmas.
Their names are Holly, Angel, Snow & Star. As well as featuring in a daily video, they’ll also be answering some of Detective Sam’s daily questions.
Here’s a video of the Christmas Friends Club*. It’s a behind the scenes video… not one we’ll be including in our daily emails. If you watch to the end of the video you’ll also meet Leon the cat who photo bombed the video making, thereby ensuring he was included in Counting Down to Christmas.
The case book of Detective Sam T. Sirhc
Detective Sam T. Sirhc keeps a casebook with her thoughts and ideas about Christmas. She’ll be adding new things to it every day and we’ll be reading excerpts from her case book every day in our Countdown to Christmas. You may want to keep your own scrapbook, journal, case book, notebook or noticeboard yourself as we go through Advent together.
A question with multiple answers
Detective Sam T Sirhc knows that every December many people put up Christmas trees to celebrate Christmas. She has been wondering things like:
Can you celebrate Jesus’ birthday without decorating up a Christmas tree?
Can you decorate a Christmas tree without celebrating Jesus’ birthday?
In her case book, Detective Sam T. Sirhc made a list of all the answer combinations using yes or no to respond to each of the two questions. Here’s her answers and questions… you may have more questions of your own. Feel free to pop them in the comments section.
Yes/Yes -“Yes, I can celebrate Jesus’ birthday without decorating a Christmas tree, and yes, I can decorate a Christmas tree without celebrating Jesus’ birthday,”
She wrote in her notebook, “Why do we decorate Christmas trees?”
Yes/No - “Yes, I can celebrate Jesus’ birthday without decorating a Christmas tree, but no, I can’t decorate a Christmas tree without celebrating Jesus’ birthday,”
She wrote in her notebook, “How do we celebrate Jesus’ birthday apart from decorating Christmas trees?”
No/No - “No, I can’t celebrate Jesus’ birthday without decorating a Christmas tree, and no, I can’t decorate a Christmas tree without celebrating Jesus’ birthday,”
She wrote in her notebook, “How important is it to decorate a Christmas tree for Jesus’ birthday?”
No/Yes - “No, I can’t celebrate Jesus’ birthday without decorating a Christmas tree, but yes, I can decorate a Christmas tree without celebrating Jesus’ birthday,”
She wrote in her notebook, “Why is decorating a Christmas tree so popular?”
A list of at least 25 questions
As you can see from what she wrote in her notebook above, Detective Sam found this process just gave her more questions to think about. It turns out that sometimes the most interesting answer to a question is another question.
Detective Sam made a long list of questions she had about Christmas, and chose 25 questions to ask her Christmas friends for help in answering.
The answers Holly, Angel, Snow & Star provide to her will be included in our daily emails… BUT I need your help to make this happen…
Here’s a sample of some of the questions. You can read the full list by downloding the questionnaire:
What are you looking forward to the most this Christmas season?
What’s the most unusual or exciting Christmas present you’ve ever unwrapped?
Where will you find peace this Christmas?
What does light have to do with Christmas?
Detective Sam & I need your help
This year we’re including a collaborative part to our Counting Down to Christmas daily emails. Each day, submitted answers from subscribers will be incorporated into the daily email as the voices of Holly, Angel, Star and Snow.
Download a questionnaire to fill in and return to me by 21 November 2023. The key to filling it in is not to think too long about any of the answers. Imagine we’re having a conversation and go with your first thoughts. Filling in the questionnaire provides you with a further reduced discount subscription price of $6 (NZD) for this year.
I’m hoping to have at least four people provide a returned questionnaire but ideally I’d love a whole lot more! If I do get 100 people respond then I’ll make sure that everyone who has submitted answers will have at least one of their answers published during Advent.
Subscription costs and plans
Our annual subscription cost is usually $30 NZD for an individual, $50 for a family/household and $75 for a large group. However, this year I’m significantly reducing the prices as I know many of our regular Kereru Publishing subscribers to our are experiencing challenges with cost of living. This always hits hardest at Christmas.
2023 prices include:
Individual subscription now $10.20 (NZD) per person
Groups more than 2 people to $6 (NZD) per person
Groups with 7 - 20 people please contact me for a unique subscription code and a reduced rate of $4.50 (NZD) per person
Groups with 21+ people please contact me for a unique subscription code and a reduced rate of $3 (NZD) per person
Extreme hardship FREE - please contact me for a free subscription
There is also the option for those who can afford to pay more to do one of the following.
Pay for a group subscription for others
Give a gift subscription to a friend
Donate a full priced subscription $30 (NZD) to help support those who can’t afford a subscription
In reducing income this year from writing Counting Down to Christmas, I’m hopeful that some of the shortfall may be recovered by increasing the number of subscribers this year or other subscribers making a donation. If you’ve enjoyed my writing in previous years I’d be very grateful if you’d spread the word for me and share this with others.
On the journey
Caroline
*Video vignettes will be included in each of the daily emails. Those who have been subscribers for a few years may remember our first Counting Down to Christmas in 2019 when we made these videos for an Instagram campaign to complement the resource. I’ve been trying to think of a way I could re-use them for another year. This is the year! Leon is played by our daughter’s cat, Babs. The videos were made by my very clever son. The email content differs from 2019 so it’s all fresh inspiration- and I hope the videos will add to our sense of awe and wonder.
Thanks so much for all of this preparatory information. Even though I'm reading it on day 5, it is so interesting. I love that observation that sometimes the most interesting answer to a question is another question! So true. And I'm making a collage-type compilation of Leon (Babs). I just love the photos. Thank you for all your contemplation and work putting everything together and including your thoughts. (How, indeed, could someone run out of things to say about Christmas?!)