Contents
Articles
- On the Train from Leicester to St Pancras, Doreen Calver
- Watch Where You Walk, Joy Wharton
- the mouths of babes, Roy Mitchell
- A SoF World Wide Web Site?, Patti Whaley, David Herbert
- Power in Us, Wendy Worham
- Sea of Faith Regional Conference, Essex University, 21st October 1995, Marian Tomlinson
- Notes of an Historian, Olive Brose
- History's Inevitable Bias, Emma Clarke
- Surfing — Women on the Sea of Faith, Maxine Green, Trudi Newton
Reviews
- Book Review: One Faith? Non-realism and the World of Faiths, David Paterson
- Book Review: Visions of Creation, Gordon Smith
Poetry
- Reflections on the Conference, Ian Alexander
- Affirmation, Margaret Chisman
- To My Old Friend Hugo Meynell on Receiving a Present of his Book Is Christianity True?, Dinah Livingstone
- Psalm 23 / 1995, Celia Barclay
Regulars and Occasionals
- Responses to SoF Articles, Ian Lyon, Vivien Gibson, Molly Rosenthal
Editorial
TOOTH FAIRIES AND SANTA hen Canon Brian Andrews told his congregation that ‘the money under our pillows and the presents in our stockings were put there by our parents and not by the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas’ (Independent, 18 December) none of the children in church burst into tears —- contrary to widespread reports in the media. I have that on his own authority from a neighbouring parish priest.
The only negative reaction was from two parents who spoke to him after the service. It was two days later, when a newspaper reporter at a party overheard a casual reference to his words and sniffed a good Christmas story, that the business became ‘news’ and an ‘incident’ was created. Thus are contemporary myths born!
Canon Andrews had drawn a distinction between the story of the baby Jesus, which he insisted was ‘not a fairy tale’, and the fictional Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas, whose acts of kindness were in fact carried out by the children’s parents. He is a caring priest and when it was pointed out to him that some children might have been upset by what he said, he apologised ‘unreservedly for any pain or hurt that I have caused’.
Bishop David Jenkins (in the same issue of the Independent) suggested that rather than apologise, he should have tackled the parents about their ‘dull materialism’. Some of us might be equally concerned at his original hard distinction between fact and fiction in the characters he chose to discuss.
Leaving aside the fairies, the present-bearing Father Christmas, Santa Claus, has some historical basis in kindness of Nicholas of Myra, just as the nativity play in Abbots Langley church has some historical basis in the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. But as the children’s gifts from Santa Claus this Christmas had in practice to be supplied by their parents, so the love of God — symbolised in the birth of Jesus — will only be experienced in 1996 if we ourselves give it practical expression. As that most down-to-earth of mystics, Teresa of Avila, put it (over four centuries ago): God has now no hands on earth but ours to show his love. That, surely, is the practical meaning of Christmas and of Emmanuel — God with us.