In a season, full of traditions and symbolism, the Christ story-the Christmas story is often some vague and cliched backdrop to the season’s celebrations. The nativity scene or the Christmas play has become condensed to a scene with three wise men, a bunch of shepherds, some angels, livestock and of course Mary, Joseph and a baby doll in a box.
Like any story, told over and over again, it can lose its impact and even its relevance. Sometimes hearing the story told afresh is enough to remind us of how wonderful the Christ story was, and still is and to bring the Christmas story to the fore.
Kel Richards wrote a book over ten years ago, called “The Aussie Bible-(Well bits of it anyway!)”. He took the story retold by Jesus’ disciples Matthew and Luke and wrote it in Australian vernacular. I hope you enjoy the extract of the Christmas story-Aussie style as follows:
“…God sent the same angel-this Gabriel bloke-to a backblocks town called Nazareth, in Galilee shire, to a nice young girl who was engaged to a local carpenter, Joe Davidson. Her name was Mary,
The angel said to her, “G’day Mary. You are a pretty special sheila. God has his eye on you.”
Mary went weak at the knees, and wondered what was going on.
But the angel said to her, “Don’t panic, don’t chuck a wobbly. God thinks you’re okay. You’re about to become pregnant, and you’ll have a son, and you’re to call him Jesus. He will be a very big wheel, and will be called the Son of God Most High….
“God’s in charge,” Mary answered. “If that’s what God wants, then it’s what I want.” Then the angel knicked off and left her alone….
In those days Caesar Augustus ordered a head count of the whole Roman world. (This was the first big tally, when Quirinius ran the Syrian branch of the empire.) And everyone had to go back to the bit of country they were born in to fill in the forms.
So Joe hiked up from Nazareth (in Galilee shire) to Bethlehem (in Judea shire) because his spot in the mulga was where King David came from, and Joes’ family tree had King David up in the top branches. He went there to fill in the forms and sign the register with his fiancée, Mary, who was pretty near nine months by this time. While they were there, she gave birth to a baby boy. She wrapped him in a bunny rug, and tucked him up in a feed trough in a back shed, because the pub was full to bursting.
There were some drovers, camped out in a paddock nearby, keeping an eye on their mob of sheep that night. Their eyes shot out on stalks when an angel of the Lord zapped into view, and the glory of the Lord filled the air like a thousand volts of electricity. The angel said: “Stop looking like a bunch of stunned mullets. Let me give you the drum, the good oil, it’s top news for the whole crew-everyone, everywhere. Today in that little town on the hill a rescuer has been born; he is the Promised One, the King, the Lord. And here’s how you’ll find him: the little nipper is wrapped up in a bunny rug, and lying in a food trough.
And before you could say, “Well, I’ll be blowed!” the whole sky was filled with more angels than you could count, all singing away at the top of their lungs (if angels have got lungs, that is): “God is great! God is bonzer-and to everyone on this planet who’s on God’s side: peace and goodwill, and by the way, Happy Christmas.” (Which rather confused the drovers because they’d never head of Christmas before.)
Suddenly the whole choir had nipped off in the blink of an eye. The drovers said to each other, We’d better make tracks to Bethlehem and have a squiz at what’s happened-check out this message from God.”
So the lot of them shot through like a Toorak tram to Bethlehem-and they found Mary, and Joe and the baby who was, sure enough, wrapped in a bunny rug and lying in a food trough. When they’d seen this they told every Tom, Dick and Harry about what happened, and everyone who heard the story was blown away by this…
…some egg-heads from out east turned up in Jerusalem asking everyone: “Where’s this new Prince of the Jews, this Promised One, who’s just been born? We saw his star out east, and we’ve come to say ‘G’day Your Majesty”.
… They … found the baby, with Mary his Mum, and they bowed and scraped and gave him some terrific pressies: gold and frankincense and myrrh (strange pressies for a baby, but better than a hankie or a pair of socks).”
photo by marvelmuzhko on pixabay.com
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