Standún's Station 11 December 1996
5 June 1996
PITY THE POOR OLD TURKEY!
By Fr Padraig Standún
It's not a great time to be a turkey. Christmas is coming
and the geese are getting away with it.
The day the turkey became fashionable was a great day for
the goose.
I can remember gooseflesh and goose grease from long gone Christmases. In fact I get goose pimples when I think of them. Then, sometime in the fifties the turkey became popular and life was never the same again.
Suddenly everyone had turkeys, big black birds parading around the haggard, talking gobbledegook. They sneaked into the henhouse and roasted the hens. Lying on the roosts bent their breastbones and left them virtually useless for sales purposes which meant they had to be eaten at home.
The taste was as good as ever but the plucking was torture for a young fellow. I could talk turkey all day but I won't because I have other things to say. About Christmas.
The countdown has already started. Advent is here, and we'll be lighting an extra candle each Sunday to signal the approach of the birthday of Jesus, the light of the world.
Christmas is a great feast, and thank God the day has come when most people in this part of the world can afford to have a real feast.
But even in the poorest and blackest days of our history people always tried to have something extra, something special to eat and drink in order to make Christmas stand out from the rest of the year.
"Nach I an Nollaig I" - "Isn't it Christmas" was the answer given to anyone who thought celebrations were going too far.
The birth of the child in the manger was seen to be of immense importance and celebrated as such. It's great too to think that this baby born in a stable almost two thousand years ago can still manage to wrap the whole world around his finger.
Even those who don't believe in him as Saviour can't be unaware that this baby, Jesus, means so much to so many different people throughout the world.
It seems too obvious to say that Christmas is about Christ, but it's something that can almost be forgotten at such a busy time with all the hullabaloo about shopping and presents and preparation.
Christmas without Christ doesn't make much sense. That's why the churches have this season of Advent, to get us thinking about the real meaning of Christmas, of God becoming one of us, coming among us as a vulnerable baby in a hovel at the side of the road, the World becoming Flesh and dwelling among us.
Over the next couple of weeks Biblical phrases will echo through our minds, phrases like "Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his path..."
That's what Advent is about, thinking through what our faith is means, where we stand in relation to God and neighbour, welcoming Christ and all that he stands for.
That's probably the secret of a happy Christmas.
Pity about the poor turkey...
Connaught Telegraph - News & Sport - December 1996
