Christingle

Christmas Eve means many things, in our house it usually means the last minute panic when we realise that we haven't bought a present for one of Charlie's friend's kids; the final inventory of Christmas dinner components, and the Christingle service.

The kids love everything about it, especially the sweets: it's usually jelly babies in our church, so unceremoniously impaled on cocktail sticks and jammed into an orange. It's quite barbarous really when you think about it.

Now I have to be honest here and say that the service doesn't do a great deal for me, but then it's not supposed to: it's about the only service in the year that our congregation are prepared to devote to children, and so it's targeted at their needs. Still, I go, because it's not about my needs, it's not about me.

So this year, thinking that it's not about me, I went that step further and volunteered to help prepare the oranges -- it gave our kids the chance to catch up with their friends who were also at the church, and it helped the Sunday School teacher who was up to her elbows in sweets.

"Where are the candles?" I asked, digging a whole in the top of my thirtieth or so orange.

"We aren't using them this year, we're trying these instead." Sunday School teacher said, pointing to my right.

I looked and to my horror I saw a bag full of... glowsticks.

"Glowsticks. You can't use glowsticks."

Despite my usual apathy about the whole Christingle thing I was incensed. And this is me who thinks people should embrace change. Arrogant Atheist chuckled inside me.

"Don't tell me, tell her", Sunday School teacher pointed to a woman sat quietly on another table cutting the red tape that symbolises spilled blood. I could tell that I had hit a raw nerve.

Red tape lady looked at me defiantly, "I'm only thinking about the safety of our young people. My heart's in my mouth when I see all those little girls with their long flowing hair just inches away from the flames. It makes me shudder, it really does."

Of course red tape lady has a point. I would be devastated if my children went up in a ball of flames because of careless Christingle handling. But thinking about it from the perspective of risk assessment, severity and likelihood, I was compelled to comment.

"Yes, that would be awful, but how many times have we had candles in this church, and how many accidents have we had?" It was a cunning move as I already knew the answers: many and none, respectively.

"But it would only take one," red tape lady countered, "And I couldn't live with it on my conscience, I really couldn't."

"I suppose you're right. But it's just not the same." I had to concede.

Then just as it seemed that the matter was concluded red tape lady, to paraphrase the words of a famous song, went and spoiled it all by saying something stupid like "Besides which, it's absolute murder scraping the wax drips off the tiles after the service, it really is."

Aha, the truth will out: This was never about the safety of the little people in our church, this was all about the complaints from the cleaning crew who struggled to get back up off the floor after they'd scraped up the dribbles from wayward Christingle wielders. I felt vindicated.

In reality the glowsticks idea was a bit of both, and it made sense to at least try them, even if only to see that people didn't like them.

As for me, liberal Christian that I profess to be, it seems that I'm as susceptible as anyone when it comes to comfort in my traditions, I really, really am.