Christmas is over? 

Picture the scene, it’s December 23rd, 2021 and I’ve just popped into my local supermarket for cranberry sauce, pigs in blankets or some other such essential item accidentally missed off the ‘Big Christmas Shopping.’ The shelves are bare, the aisles are rammed, peace and goodwill to all men is in short supply, and a huddle of department managers are gathering in the middle of the ‘seasonal’ section. “That’s it, Christmas is over,” declares the store manager as he began to organise the restocking of the shelves with cleaning products, storage boxes and exercise equipment.

Now even the most cynical amongst us would be hard pressed to accept his announcement that ‘Christmas was over,’ this early, it hadn’t even begun!

But here we are, it’s January, the start of a brand new year and if our Christmas decorations are still up, they won’t be up for too much longer. Perhaps we’ve embraced a post-Christmas deep clean of the house? Or maybe we’ve set sail on our new year’s resolutions and taken up jogging? Or perhaps just a few of us are lingering for as long as possible in the Christmas season and holding on to the warm feelings of family reunions, over-laden dinner plates and the way your feet feel in those new socks Aunty June knitted.

After the indulgent excesses of the Christmas period, there is something about the new year that sets our minds at how we will take care of ourselves. Do we need to embrace a healthier lifestyle? Are there things in our lives that need to be deep cleaned? Did we capture something in the last couple of weeks that we need to take a hold of and carry forward with us into the new year?

The Wellbeing Journey has been designed as a series to explore holistic wellness: body, mind and spirit and by running the course with those in your community, it’s a great way to serve and build relationships with those currently outside your church.




If you personally have decided to take up a bit of a health kick and get walking more, why not take the prompt to develop your discipleship walk at the same time? Prayer, care, share is at the heart of Hope for Every Home, and committing to regularly pray for our communities is so important. The Oikos prayer app is a great resource to help you with this.

Now, back to our last minute dashes to the supermarket. This Christmas, I popped into my local supermarket-owned corner shop on Boxing Day where I found a manager showing his staff where he wanted the Easter Eggs to be placed. At first, my heart groaned at the site; our advent calendars have just been emptied, the chocolate orange is still intact and you’re trying to sell us chocolate eggs?

Of course, the retail industry is not run in respect of the church calendar, nor indeed of societal expectations, but rather with a carefully-honed agenda to keep us coming back for more, but what if we saw this oddly-timed shelf restacking as something more significant? Could I dare to suggest that there is something prophetic in ending the Christmas celebrations with a pointing towards Easter? What if, instead of physically and metaphorically packing Jesus with the manger scene at the end of our celebrations we kept him in the centre of our minds?

As we look ahead from the new year to Easter, this year, we want to invite you to join us for Alive 2024. Alive takes everyone on a journey from Easter to Ascension, encountering Jesus’ followers who met the Alive Jesus then, and those followers who know the Alive Jesus today, sharing the way that he transforms our lives.

We encourage you to take some time over the coming weeks and months to explore this new resource, which has been tried and tested and comes with resources for adults, families and young people in a range of contexts, and get ready to use it to share the best news with our communities; Jesus is alive!

So as we begin this new year, perhaps we need to live lives which more intentionally declare that Christmas isn't over, it has only just begun. Easter eggs may replace selection boxes on the shelves but Easter doesn't replace Christmas, it completes it, and Jesus doesn’t get packed away with the tinsel and candles; not even the grave could overcome him. Jesus is alive and transforming lives day by day!