Why was this day different from all other days?
As a relatively observant Jew, it’s a question I ask myself almost every week.
When the sun begins to set on Friday afternoon and I find myself getting dressed in my best clothes and walking to my local friendly and relatively open-minded synagogue to celebrate the start of the Shabbath.
Why am I doing this? Is today really any different from a Tuesday afternoon?
Why do I try to live differently on this day as apposed to any other? Is the Sabbath day really any holier?
And today (Monday) was Christmas, and as a relatively observant Jew I don’t celebrate Christmas as a religious holiday, but it has got me seriously thinking.
I woke up late this Christmas morning as I wanted to move my car off the pavement before 9am, just in case the Traffic Wardens might be miserable enough to work on Christmas morning.
I noticed a very different scene outside my flat, instead of hundreds of cars queuing to turn right, there were only two cars on the road, I almost had to do a double take, and remind myself what day it was; 9am Monday morning and the streets were empty – ‘ahhh…’ I said to myself ‘thank God it’s Christmas!’
The point or idea that got going in my mind was that, for some strange reason the entire British nation lives differently on Christmas.
People shut their shops, don’t got to work, spend time with relatives (or avoid spending time with relatives) – eating, getting a bit tipsy, giving each other silly presents, wearing paper hats etc… (you know the score better than me).
It’s because whether we like it or not that’s what you do, it’s what we (as a nation) do.
Christmas is an idea, a notion, that one day in the year your gonna do things differently to every other day.
But what if we as a nation did things differently more often? What if we decided to live differently? What if we had different priorities?
The power of Christmas for me is it’s ability to change the way we live our lives, even if it is on one day in the year. Because if we can all choose to live differently on Christmas, then there is hope that maybe we can start to live differently everyday of the week.
Maybe we can spend time with each other, close the shop for an afternoon, take a day off work just to chill.
Maybe we can see each day as Christmas? Lets make it the ‘365 Days of Christmas’!
