IT’S October 15, as I write.

This morning, on a pastoral visit, I noticed a house in Pershore decorated, as far as possible on a blank wall facing the street, with all the various neon light-up designs ready to be switched on for Christmas.

It made me think for a moment what it actually meant.

If it hadn’t been for the birth of a particular baby over 2,000 years ago, there would be no Christmas.

Christ-Mass – the Feast of Christ – is the reason why Christmas is celebrated at all.

The commercial world, however, has turned this great feast into a profitbinging free-for-all where nothing seems to matter but the sole aim of selling all the stock.

So what is this feast? It’s the time when we recall that we are loved so much that this God who created us chose to come to be one of us and identify with us in our humanity.

He did this to show each one of us that we matter, to show us that we’re worthy in God’s eyes to be offered the privilege of overcoming death in the power of the risen Christ because God wants us to be with him forever.

Perhaps we will see all this as some kind of twisted fairytale which has no bearing for us. Perhaps we’ll allow ourselves to be swallowed up in the commercial binge for 24 hours.

Perhaps, however, this year will be a watershed in our rethinking of what lies ahead for us and the beginning of something new in our hearts to do with love.

It might be a time of reconciliation, one with another; a time of saying how much we love each other, of realising that we’re worth more than we ever dreamed; of coming to terms with the God of love who gave us Christ-Mass, the Feast of Christ, so that we might come to know more deeply the reality of God and his oneness with us.

May this Christmastide, this Christ-Mass, this Feast of love, be a time of renewal for you all, and a time of true peace for the world.

REV KENNETH CRAWFORD Vicar, Pershore Abbey