A small interlude between Christmas Story Characters, in which I share some of my thoughts and feelings about Christmas.
So how is it going? Christmas? I’d like to hear about how you feel about it all.
Me, I have mixed feelings. I love Christmas. I love to celebrate the birth of Jesus. That for me is full atonement, nothing separating us from God now. Jesus shows us who God is, but he also shows us what humanity really is, so his birth is well worth celebrating.
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I also like all the midwinter festivity. December would be pretty grim without Christmas lights, and I like the midwinter urge to brighten our houses against the long nights, huddle together, eating and drinking and telling stories.
At our university of the third age song and story group, we learnt a song. The lyrics are by Bill Meek. It’s called I Am Christmas:
The first line is “I will sew a braid of gold on grey December’s ragged sleeve.”
I love those words. December would indeed feel ragged without a fancy hem to neaten off the year.
However, alongside all the enjoyable things, I often feel like my heart is going to break and my head is going to burst. The cruel jagged, ragged edges of life seem much worse against all the Christmas expectations. Personal tragedy and international violence cry out against celebrating the birth of the Prince of peace. Homelessness, disease and poverty jars against the sugar-coated Christmas adverts.
And yes, all those adverts! And it all starts so soon! I feel compelled to do more, buy more and be more to make the perfect Christmas happen and I fail badly against my impossible expectations!
What’s more, the ghosts of Christmas past crowd in on me. I remember the way it used to be, I remember old friends who I don’t know any more (I know we can’t keep up with everyone) and yes, those who’ve died seem close, but they are untouchable. Add to all that the sense of passing time and it makes for a very intense and sometimes heavy season for me.
Still, I wouldn’t change it. Life isn’t just a bundle of laughs and Jesus wasn’t born so that we could have a great party, even though he was a fan of parties. He was born so we can know life in all its fulness and that includes living with unease.
This December, I read these words by the poet Wendell Berry:
“The empire of money, war and fire
Cuts across the land.
There are in the same country
Shepherds watching their flocks.”
Wendell Berry, published in Plough Quarterly magazine, December 2025.
It reminds me that everyday goodness carries on and that reminder is a blessing.
It also links nicely to my next post! Can you guess what Christmas story characters that will feature?
Now we’re in the last full week of Advent and we’re approaching the winter solstice, I’m posting a few imaginative thoughts based on the story of Jesus’ birth. This week in 2025 holds dreadful news and new sadness and fear has entered the world. It’s into just such a world that some messengers speak.
This is a story of a man whose life was rocked by personal and national events. It’s a story of bravery which begins with bewilderment, frustration, disappointment and anger but ends with reassurance, determination and hope.
That’s another day’s work done. Shelves, tables and chairs, fencing panels and dressed stone are all neatly stacked. I’m a carpenter, but I do more than you might think. I work in wood and stone, and I can build a house and everything to put in it. I’ve done a lot more today than was needed, more than I’ve got orders for to tell the truth, but a little hard work never hurt anyone or so they say. Anyway, I’m hoping for a good night’s sleep for once, so I’m trying to wear myself out.
Not that any amount of sawing and sanding will calm my mind out and blot out my worries. For one thing, the Romans, who normally ignore the hill towns, have decided to check up on us. It’s too much effort for them to come here, so we’ve all got to travel to our ancestral towns. What’s the point in that? Don’t ask me. I just know I’ve got to leave my business and lose money to go traipsing off to Bethlehem. Bethlehem! What’s so special about Bethlehem?
Maybe it’s a good idea to do some extra work now after all.
As if that’s not bad enough, the girl I’m meant to marry is pregnant. Whoever the Father is, I know it’s not me, but she’s come up with some story about it being God’s baby. Honestly, she’s so young and she’s lived her life in a daydream, like she was always expecting something out of the ordinary to happen. In my heart, I’m sure it’s not her fault, but I’d decided to end the engagement and find a different road through life.
That is, until a surprise visitor arrived. The visitor told me he was sent from God and that it’s true. Mary’s baby is from God and that I shouldn’t be afraid. The cheek of it, how did he know I was scared?
I’m good at making plans, estimating times and counting the cost of walls, roofs, doors and furniture, but it looks like I’ve got to make some different plans now.
My name’s Joseph and I’m about to plan a route to Bethlehem with a pregnant woman who still isn’t my wife and I’m not the baby’s father. Bethlehem – I have heard some ancient promises that someone very special is going to come from there. I’ve also heard that there are roads that lead from there all the way to Egypt.
Now we’re in the last full week of Advent and we’re approaching the winter solstice, I’m posting a few imaginative thoughts based on the story of Jesus’ birth. This week in 2025 holds dreadful news. New sadness and fear has entered the world. It’s into just such a world that some messengers speak.
This is a story of a young woman from a small village who was asked to do something great.
News and visitors are rare in our little town, hidden away in the Galilean Hills. Sometimes I complain about that, but I’m always told it’s for the best. Nobody takes much notice of us, so we can just get on with our lives. Still, I often wonder what’s over the horizon.
Roman soldiers are talked about but never seen round here. We’re not worth the effort of building their famous roads uphill to Nazareth. Sometimes I daydream about walking along the rough track that we call a road. Where will it lead?
My life plan was very straightforward and predictable, just like every other girl. I’m engaged to be married to a good man and I expected to live my life keeping house, cooking and cleaning, looking after our children and our parents until I can sit down with grandchildren on my knee. Well, that’s all changed since a surprise visitor arrived. As far as I know, he’s only been to see me.
It might have helped if he’d explained things to my parents first, but I doubt they’d have believed him. He told me he was an angel, a messenger direct from God. He told me I am very special and specially chosen by God to have his child, God’s child who will save us all. He listened when I told him it was impossible, but his eye twinkled when he reminded me this is God we’re talking about.
I know that God has promised wonderful things through the birth of a child, and of course everyone that’s ever done anything great started out in some woman’s womb, but this feels like more than that.
Of course it’s hard for any of us to take in. Suddenly it seems our hills can’t hide us or save us anymore, but I feel peaceful and strangely excited about it all.
My name’s Mary and I think I’m going to find out where our little track leads to.
Now we’re in the last full week of Advent and we’re approaching the winter solstice, I’m posting a few imaginative thoughts based on the story of Jesus’ birth. This week in 2025 holds dreadful news. New sadness and fear has entered the world. It’s into just such a world that some messengers speak.
This is astory of a man with the job of preparing the way for someone else. It’s hard work and he compares it to building a a road.
Building roads is hard work, back breaking, palm blistering, limb tiring, and head crushing work. Before you get to the hard physical work, there’s a lot of thinking to be done, then talking, consulting, objections and persuasions, plans and notices, permissions and start dates.
Once the consultations are over, the permissions are granted and the start date’s decided, you’d think it would be straightforward, but no. Everyone complains about potholes, mud and gravel. They complain about sharp bends, blind corners and traffic hold ups, so you’d think everyone would be delighted about a new road, wide enough for two-way traffic and straightened out with a clean smooth surface, but when it comes to being built, then a new load of complaints pile in.
Temporary traffic lights hold up traffic more than potholes, and diversions add more to journey times than wide bends. While the road workers toil, drivers get nostalgic for the bad old road.
My name’s John, son of Elizabeth and Zechariah. I’m the one Angel Gabriel was talking about when they interrupted my father at his most important work! My birth and name caused some trouble I can tell you. Blessing and trouble could be my middle names!
The road planned out for me was probably to become a priest like my Father, but God has sent me on a detour via the desert. God wants me to be a sort of road builder, preparing the way for the Messiah, filling in the holes and smoothing out the bumps in our nation’s life, clearing away the rubble that gets in between us and what God is doing.
I don’t expect it to be popular – I’ve never been a popular sort of man and I know people can get attached to the holes and bumps that trip them up, but I’ve got strong arms and legs and a good head on my shoulders and I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to get us on the road to God.
Now we’re in the last full week of Advent and we’re approaching the winter solstice, I’m posting a few imaginative thoughts based on the story of Jesus’s birth. This week in 2025 holds dreadful news and new sadness and fear has entered the world. It’s into just such a world that some messengers speak.
Now’s the time of year when my name gets mentioned, my words are read and someone’s idea of what I look like is scrawled with messages of love, hope and happiness, enveloped and popped through letterboxes. I smile at how the great artists of the world have tried to outdo each other by making me look opulent, over laden with dazzling feathers, gorgeous with golden robes and lightening the darkness with a shining halo.
Really, it’s all a bit more basic than that and my work is literally very down to earth. Christmas is a very down-to-earth time. Delivering messages is my job. It’s not always straightforward and to be honest, Happy Birthday cards aren’t our responsibility. Our busiest time is when life gets tough on earth and on the rare occasions we’re seen, it tends to be on battlefields or by deathbeds.
We live outside time and space, so we’re not bothered by clocks and watches and delivery time targets, but one earthly season, we had to make multiple visits to one small place.
Some messages are trickier to deliver than others. Just think about this:
I told an elderly man, that his elderly wife was going to have a baby and he’d got to give the child a name the family would disapprove of.
Then I told an unmarried teenage girl she would have God’s baby.
Then I told the man she was engaged to that he’d still got to marry her and bring up the child as though it were his own.
You can see that my job isn’t always easy. When it came to telling a band of shepherds that the saviour of the world had been born and was lying asleep in a manger, I took along a whole choir to back me up!
I always start my messages by saying Don’t be Afraid!
My name’s Gabriel and I know that earth is going through a dangerous time. My hope is that people on earth are not dazzled by Christmas glamour and hear the true message of Jesus. God with us, peace on earth and light in the darkness.
A true story of a 1960s primary school nativity play when a young child’s heart was stirred by jealousy and longing.
Calling can come at any age.
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It was cold and dark when I walked down our city street. Familiar tree trunks grew black and dark in the gloom, bare branches loomed overhead, and pale lights glowed through thinly curtained windows. My biggest worry was not getting my shoes and socks dirty or dropping my orange booklet. That booklet, of typed Christmas carols, stapled together by my teacher was my current favourite possession. I was thrilled when we were given them and told to keep them safe for practices and performance. I was delighted that we could keep them and when it was all over, I saved mine in a special box ready for the next December when I would look at it again and sing the songs which stirred my heart.
Everything looks different in the dark.
The school was at the bottom of Serlby Rise, and it looked different with bright lights shining out from a dark building surrounding the still, shadow filled playground. Once inside, my insides leapt with excitement. School would only look like this once a year, in this strange fluorescent light with only blackness at the windows. What’s more, I had to go into a strange classroom to leave my coat and line up. Chairs, desks and the blackboard all faced different ways. There were different books, pictures and smells and I missed my own space where I’d found my way around.
Everything looks different in a strange classroom.
Thankfully, my shoes weren’t too muddy, and my face beamed when I took my coat off to show my new dress made of red corduroy with long sleeves and white lace at the collar. A jabot, mam had told me that was called, when she bought it specially.
As smartly as we could, all wearing our best clothes, we marched across the playground to the school hall. Strangely, that night our teachers let us out in the cold without our coats on, but that night everything was different and every nerve in my young body knew it!
The school hall looked different. It was full of chairs.
The hall was full of chairs lined up in rows. I didn’t know where the chairs had come from or how they got there, but there was a gap down the middle for us to walk along, between our patiently waiting parents. I felt my cheeks burn when I passed mine. They were there!
The wooden floor was three months on from its summer clean and polish and our footsteps added to the dulling scuffs when we took our seats. Wonder of wonders, we weren’t sitting on the floor, but there were more rows of chairs, facing the audience, for us to sit on.
I was part of the choir and turned to the first page in my precious orange booklet. Miraculously, all the carols were in the right order. Miss White struck up on the piano and we stood to sing. I don’t remember, but I wonder if we began with Once In Royal David’s City.
Sitting on chairs in the hall and standing up to sing was different.
At the front of the hall, two chairs were placed in front of a manger, ready for the story’s characters to gather and form a tableau. A wooden box was upturned ready for the readers to delight us. Bible readings and carols told each part of the story. So, we sang O Little Town of Bethlehem while Mary and Joseph walked down the gap in the chairs and took their places and While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night when the shepherds arrived to visit the newborn baby. We Three Kings of Orient Are accompanied the wise men.
Sitting in the choir, even with my new dress, clean socks and shoes and my precious booklet, I felt left out, as if I was there because nobody thought I could do anything else.
I didn’t want to be dressed up as part of the Nativity Tableau.
I longed for a different part, but I didn’t want to be dressed up, I didn’t want to be Mary or an angel. No, I wanted to be a reader.
When Gina (I think that was her name) stood up on the wooden box and spoke out Nearly two thousand years ago … I was overcome with jealousy. Her dress was red velvet, her cardigan was white and her dark curls were neatly brushed. Her voice was clear and perfect as she told us the story of Jesus being born.
Maybe I was different because I wanted to read. Maybe we all did!
My young heart filled with longing and sank into despondency when I realised that no one knew that’s what I wanted to do or would ever choose me to do it.
That feeling lasted a long time. I was over thirty before anyone asked me to read out in church. Once they did, it opened up a whole new life for me and before too long I was reading out in church every week!
I am very grateful to Gina for reading so beautifully and stirring up that longing in my heart. Gina, I wonder where you are and if you’re reading this? If you are, then thank you!
I am very grateful to the teachers who taught me to sing carols and gave me my own booklet to keep, then gave up their evenings for us.
A true story of mince pies, love, gratitude and Christmas baking!
It was another full day at The Vicarage. In between a meeting with churchwardens and an architect to see what could be done about a leaky flat roof and visiting a family to talk about their beautiful baby’s baptism, I settled down at my desk to think about Sunday’s sermon. That didn’t last long before the phone rang. When I answered it, I heard the slightly anxious sound of a bereaved son. I had met the family to discuss his mum’s funeral, and they’d shared with me a lovely, affectionate picture of her life. It turned out they hadn’t said everything.
We forgot to mention, he said, you must saythis ….
I guessed what he was about to say, and I guessed right.
You’ve got to tell everyonethat at Christmas she made the best mince pies in the world.
Of course I will, I said, that’ll be my privilege to say.
If I ate a mince pie every time I heard that someone’s mum made the best ones in the world, my teeth would have dropped out years ago! It’s always said with real love, affection and gratitude and those words go straight to the hearts of anyone who knew her.
I suppose in a Great British Bake-Off sort of situation, all the mince pies wouldn’t be the best. There’d be some soggy bottoms or burnt crusts and mincemeat escaping through the pastry crimping.
My mam’s mince pies fell apart when you picked them up. She always said it was a sign of good pastry! Still, I will say they were the best in the world.
I remember our oven warmed kitchen being covered in flour and taken over completely by mixing bowls, jars of mincemeat, rolling pins and pastry cutters. No weighing scales though, mam believed in measuring spoons and guesswork – no wonder the pastry was so crumbly!
I remember the thrill of spooning in the filling, cutting crosses into the lids and the delicious smell filling the house. For days to come, that cold house was filled with visitors who happily tucked in. In January, when the leftover pies turned stale, they were put back in the oven, and we ate them with spoons and custard. Yummy!
There’s a tale sometimes told about mince pies which tries to make something Christian about them. It goes like this: the plain pastry represents the stable in which Jesus was born and like that stable, the pastry holds treasure.
That all sounds a bit forced to me. I’d rather enjoy our God given delicious food and be thankful! The true tale of the best mince pies in the world tells me more about love, the love of parents who work hard at a difficult time of year to make everything special and memorable for their children and friends.
Here’s a verse from one of my favourite Christmas Carols:
Love came down at Christmas, Love all lovely, Love divine; Love was born at Christmas; star and angels gave the sign.
That was written by Christina Rossetti (1885).
I wonder if she might have added mince pies to the signs of love!
I am so grateful to all the sons and daughters who’ve told me about their mum’s mince pies and for my mam who made the best and crumbliest!
What are your memories of Christmas food? I’d love to hear.
If you are buying, baking or eating mince pies this week, have a wonderful time.
December arrived in a hurry that year, with an overfull diary and unplannable events as yet unseen, but expected, hovering in my head and tugging at my heart. I placed my tongue firmly in my cheek and wondered, not for the last time, why we celebrate Christmas at such a busy time of the year. It’s not only busy because of all the good, enjoyable things we do to cheer the dark late autumn and early winter days and retell the wonderful story of the birth of Jesus, but it’s busy because disease takes its place and revels in the dark and cold. Sadness also can creep in under the dazzling radar of sparkling lights and remind us that life isn’t how it used to be or how we want it to be.
Hospitals and health centres brace themselves, for an influx of patients, parents and teachers persevere in homes and classrooms full of coughs and colds, shopworkers and hospitality workers smile through their heavy loads, making happy times for their customers and churches go all out to tell the story of God with us, God born into this wonderful, crazy, diseased, happy, sad and dangerous world. We try to include everyone and care for those who are sick or unhappy.
Expectations were high that year. It was my first December as a vicar, with parishes of my own to be responsible for and I wanted to do well. You see, I love Christmas, and I want this time of year to be good and enjoyable, and I want messages of hope, love, joy and peace to take root and flourish.
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So, I met that December with some trepidation and excitement and wondered how my energy would last, until one day the Vicarage doorbell rang. It was a delivery, an unexpected parcel with a tasty surprise inside. Inside the wrapping was a tin full of comfort, love and energy. It was a large cake, bursting with fruit and nuts, sweet and spicy, sticky deliciousness.
This was a surprise, unexpected gift from a parishioner. Fittingly, her name was Grace. She had been housebound for a number of years. I’d visited her and we shared Holy Communion together in her living room. She always welcomed me with kind hospitality, and the gift of cake was considerate and generous. It helped me through until December 25th.
The story didn’t end there. For the rest of Grace’s life, a cake arrived at the Vicarage door at the start of every December. At her funeral, a number of us gathered over tea and cake and we shared memories of Grace. There was a group of women who’d visited her at home; her cleaner, hairdresser, chiropodist, gardener and me.
This true story begins on a November evening in a cosy 1960s living room, and ends in 2016. A story of family life, knitting and a visit to a convent guest house.
Sign spotted outside the excellent Knit Nottingham Shop on Trinity Walk in Nottingham.
The single, shaded ceiling lamp lit up the room with its brown table, brown dining chairs, brown sideboard, brown settee and orange cushioned brown armchairs all set on a brown and orange carpet. The flame effect, two bar electric fire warmed the air with its cheery glow and the light reflected on the fibre glass curtains decorated with brown leaves. Those curtains were changed to match the seasons and covered the windows at either end of the room which we called big. The big room was where we sat, played, listened to records, danced, watched television and ate on Sundays. Our other downstairs rooms were a kitchen and a bathroom. Upstairs were three bedrooms. This is where I lived until I was sixteen.
The Beginning.
I find the start of any knitting project is the most difficult time. The stitches are tight and unwieldy. Each stitch stands alone and feels disconnected to the others. There is no supportive framework.
It was Wednesday evening, one of my favourite times of the week, not because my dad and elder brother were out at scouts and my younger brother was in bed, but because the room was full of women and for a while I was part of them.
Mam was there, of course, and so was my aunty (mam’s sister) and my own sister, who had already left home. They met together with their knitting and while they knitted and talked, talked and knitted, I listened. I could be very quiet, I could turn invisible, so maybe they forgot I was there and didn’t send me to bed. That was my time for listening and learning about work, friendship, clothes, hairstyles and married life and that time was precious. It set a good foundation for me.
I did learn to knit (that’s the subject for another post), but not on those Wednesday evenings in the mid-1960s. There was far too much to talk about to have time for lessons.
The Middle.
The middle of a piece of knitting is the best and easiest part. The stitches know what they’re doing and support each other. The stitches that are already in place hold everything together and the pattern emerges.
About forty years later, in 2003, I would recall those evenings. Then, I was a green curate in a small-town parish church and I went on retreat to Saint Oswald’s pastoral centre in Sleights, North Yorkshire. Although I hadn’t even looked at a knitting needle for years, in the week before I left, I had a strangely urgent yearning to do some knitting! That yearning was irresistible and without knowing why, I went into our local chemist’s shop and bought rainbow wool, needles and a pattern for a baby’s jumper. I guess I thought I could manage something that small!
So, when I packed my bag, I included my knitting kit along with a notebook and pen, novel and clean knickers and socks. The journey lasted a day and took me from Nottingham to York by train, then across the Yorkshire Moors by bus. It carried me far away from the city and responsibility to a small village and into a convent guest house, generous with food, time, quiet, space and attention.
One nun was allocated to me for the week as a spiritual director, and that evening when we had our introductory talk, I told her about the knitting urge. Excellent! She said, knitting’s a good thing to do on retreat. Before bedtime, another nun had told me that knitting is the best way to pray. That night when I began to laboriously work out how to cast on stitches and get started, I wondered what they meant. I didn’t have to wait long to find out.
At breakfast on my first morning, one of the nuns came to me looking concerned. My sister had phoned the house with sad news and a request. My aunty (mam’s sister) had died in the night, and would I take her funeral? This wasn’t a surprise, I knew how ill aunty was. I’d visited her in the week before I went away and knew it wouldn’t be long. Not a surprise, then, but definitely a shock. Aunty had always been part of my life and being childless herself, she made life better for her nieces and nephews.
That certainly changed the direction of my retreat. I was treated with great kindness and the spiritual direction for the week was to knit and remember my aunty.
Remember I did. As I struggled on, deciphering the pattern, knitting and purling, increasing and decreasing, happy and thankful memories flooded my mind. Those long-forgotten Wednesday evenings came alive, and I realised my real inheritance of laughing, teasing, friendly support. While I knitted that jumper, I knitted my life back together.
The End.
The end of a piece of knitting can be traumatic and tricky. You don’t really know how it’s going to turn out until you’ve finished. Sewing together the separate parts can be hard and it’s easy to go wrong. And after all that, you know that the next piece of knitting is going to be casting on!
In 2016, when I was vicar of a group of village churches, I used the tiny jumper with the too long sleeves, in a Christmas talk for children, focusing on what gifts you might give to a newborn baby!
I’m very grateful to my mam, all my aunts (there were a lot of them!) and my sister and I will always cherish those Wednesday evenings. I’m also grateful to the Sisters of the Holy Paraclete and their wise, generous and kind care of me at St Oswald’s.
Who are you grateful to, this week?
What did you call your living room when you were a child?
Wander well,
Mandy.
Things I love:
Knitting.
A good chat.
A retreat.
St Oswald’s house in Sleights is closed now, but you can visit the Sisters of the Holy Paraclete (Holy Spirit) at St Hilda’s Priory in Whitby. You can go for the day, a holiday or a retreat.
Family story, 1960s, childhood, mother, aunt, sister, knitting, retreat, death in the family.
A story of a primary school assembly and St Martin for Remembrance Day.
We carried the cold with us into the school hall that foggy November day. The damp clung to our woolly cardigans and jumpers after the short walk across the grey yard and our bare knees shivered when we sat on the floor with crossed legs ready for assembly to begin.
Miss White struck up the piano and we began to sing:
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When a knight won his spurs, in the stories of old,
He was gentle and brave, he was gallant and bold;
With a shield on his arm and a lance in his hand
For God and for valour he rode through the land.
Instantly, I was transported to a bright and sunny land, with a narrowing road winding its way across green hills, with a gentle and brave knight looking out for people to help and rescue.
No charger have I, and no sword by my side,
Yet still to adventure and battle I ride,
Though back into storyland giants have fled,
And the knights are no more and the dragons are dead.
Excitement ran through my body. I knew there was a big world beyond that cramped school hall. What adventures would I go on? Who would I rescue? At home, my dolls and teddy bear were constantly getting into trouble, and I worked hard to look after them, save them from danger and bandage their wounds. While I was away from them at school, assembly was a good time for the sustaining stories which would see me through the day, to drop into my mind.
Let faith be my shield and let joy be my steed
‘gainst the dragons of anger, the ogres of greed;
And let me set free with the sword of my youth,
From the castle of darkness, the power of truth.
The hero inside this quiet girl rose up while I sang and I felt there was nothing I couldn’t do.
When Miss White plonked out the last resounding note, our headmaster stood up and walked to the front. Joy of joys, he had his red book with the ribbon marker.
I sat enthralled when, as if by magic, he opened the book at exactly the right page.
He read us a story about a Roman soldier, who was named after the Roman god of war. Martin was born in about 397 CE. As a soldier, he spent most of his wages providing food and clothing for poor people and one day during a harsh winter in France, he met a man who was hungry and cold. Martin had nothing left to give apart from his cloak. He used his sword to slice his cloak in two and gave half to the destitute man.
Later on, Martin fell into a deep sleep and dreamt of Jesus wearing the half cloak which he’d given away. In the dream, Jesus said “Inasmuch as you have done this to my brother, you have done it to me.”
That story settled into my young heart and mind. Years later, I would search through the Bible to find Martin, but of course his story isn’t there. He lived long after the Bible was completed. Two churches dedicated to St Martin became very important to me.
Martin is the patron saint of soldiers, and he’s remembered on November 11th, which we know as Armistice Day or Remembrance Day, so Martin is often forgotten.
I am thankful for my teachers who sparked my imagination with songs and stories and I’m thankful that they told me the story of Martin.
If you wear a poppy or keep silence in memory of those who’ve died in war, spare a thought for Martin and whisper a prayer that like him, people with wealth, power and privilege will notice those in need and help them.
Did you know that it’s because of St Martin that we have the word tourists?Martin became bishop of Tours in France and so many pilgrims travelled there, they became known as tourists!
If you want to read something about what Jesus said about giving food and clothing to the needy, look at Matthew’s Gospel chapter 25.
Wandering Through The Land Of Nod. 