Saturday (6 Dec) we celebrated the feast of St. Nicholas of Myra. For me, this is the “beginning” of the Nativity season. This is the day that we decorate the house – the tree though, does not go up until Christmas Eve – small gifts are given, and we enjoy a good meal with family and friends.

We are now “in” the season that more than any other, emphasises the exchange of gifts. For the next three weeks, many of us will be searching for “the right” gift for a friend or family member, we sometimes go to great lengths to acquire these – as they are a conscious expression of the value we place on those relationships. We have come to associate St. Nicholas with gift giving (and gift receiving), largely due to the many legends of his charity. One, in particular, many of you will be familiar with. A poor widower had three daughters, and was faced with the horrible prospect of selling them into slavery simply to ensure that they would have enough to eat. Over the course of three nights – Nicholas tossed bags of coin through the man’s window, enough for each daughter to have a dowry. Through his gift giving, Nicholas enabled the young women to marry well, and restored the family’s freedom. Nicholas embodies the zeal of the prophet bringing glad tidings to the belittled, healing the broken spirit, bringing relief to captives and releasing the imprisoned.

In three weeks we commemorate an exchange of gifts (humanity and divinity) that transforms a long relationship, and that inaugurates our own personal transformation – here we are the poor young women facing a life of subjugation, freed by an act of charity and love. In the meantime, while we are preparing for parties, and the annual potlatch under the tree, it is I think worth using our experience of the current feast, as a means of preparing for the feast yet to come. The annual commemoration of the works of St. Nicholas offers us just this opportunity – to take the next three weeks and reflect on how, over the past year, we may have been the giver of gifts, and not only the receiver of gifts. I’m not talking about fast abandoned chartreuse turtlenecks, and fancy bottles of distilled yak urine; instead I’m talking about a loaf of bread, a kind word, a visitation, a phone call, a meal, the possibilities for one individual acting alone to positively transform the life of another are endless, and are often very simple. The feast that inaugurates the Nativity season, is a point in the year when we might pause to reflect on how we have been (if we have been) embodying the spirit of St. Nicholas, giving gifts to others; and if we have not been, then what might we do to change that in the coming year.