Counting Down to Christmas

A note from Caroline

Hi friends

I decided to write the final post for the 2023 Counting Down to Christmas in real time on Boxing Day in Aotearoa. It’s not coming out to you at 5am though! After a busy time, I’m into my day slowly and leisurely.

As I sit here starting to write with my cup of tea and reheated leftovers of the Gamman family Christmas Day French toast, my email inbox is dinging constantly with Boxing Day sales notices. I hope this email doesn’t get lost in a sea of commercialism! I promise there’ll be no sales pitches, no discounts, no pressure to buy here.

This email is from me, written in my own voice. In the past few weeks I’ve written in the voice of Detective Sam and sometimes in the voice of one of the four Christmas friends. They’ve finished their work and it’s now just me being myself. It’s been fun incorporating some of my fiction writing skills into Counting Down to Christmas. Sam was a fun character to think about and write about. As a fiction writer I always ask myself why a character behaves a certain way. For instance, Sam’s peculiar name spelling and her curiousity about Christmas meant that in my mind she had to share a birthday with Jesus at Christmas. Sam of course did share many of my own thoughts, ideas, values, preferences and questions. Like Sam I love a good question and am not worried if the answer to a question is another question.

I wanted to write today’s email in real time to make sure I capture the feeling I have at this time and to respond to the interactions we’ve had together throughout the Counting Down to Christmas season. I hope you are having/ have had a love-fuelled and love-filled Christmas. Mine felt particularly love-fuelled this year after quite a difficult second half of the year for my extended family. Love, peace, hope and joy are so much more than words that appear on Christmas decorations. They are words that hold power to make a difference. We might throw them around glibly but the reality is they take work, committment, time and patience. Most of all, they require grace. The gift of underserved grace comes to us from God in the form of Jesus Christ.

There’s a lot about grace in the New Testament. I think this passage from the Apostle Paul is particularly relevent to this time of year.

I now place you in God's care. Remember the message about his gift of undeserved grace! This message can help you and give you what belongs to you as God's people. I have never wanted anyone's money or clothes. You know how I have worked with my own hands to make a living for myself and my friends. By everything I did, I showed how you should work to help everyone who is weak. Remember that our Lord Jesus said, “More blessings come from giving than from receiving.”

Acts 20:32-35 (CEV)

The gift of God With Us walking alongside us as we stumble and pick ourselves up again and again is a gift of undeserved grace. It never gets old. It never ends. It keeps the celebration of Christmas alive in our hearts not just over the designated Christmas season, but throughout the year.

This year’s Counting Down to Christmas went through some big transitions when I realised I wouldn’t be able to deliver some of my early ideas. An extended family challenge with my parents requiring care and support left me brimming with ideas but extremely time poor. The second half of 2023 hasn’t been a very easy time. I know I share this experience of facing every day life challenges with several subscribers. Life is sometimes messy and chaotic and tricky. In the end, what I put together for this year was less work than usual but somehow all came together. Serendipity. Grace. God at work.

Interactions and feedback

One of the things I’ve loved about this year’s countdown has been the interactions and feedback I’ve had from many of you. There were about 120 subscribers this year. Writing is always a bit strange in that writers don’t often get to see how our readers respond to our words. It can be a lonely experience. When words leave me they go out and away from me and take on a life of their own through the reader’s eyes and experience. I always hope that they make a difference, but I don’t always know for sure that they will land well. So thank you for sharing your thoughts and reflections with me. I’ve had more feedback usual whether through the comments or chat on Substack or by email or if I’ve seen you in person, through conversation. I had hoped for more interactions in the chats and comments, but I also appreciate that this style is not for everyone and it’s a busy time of year. I know it’s been fairly standard to be a few days behind as other things press in on time. Special thanks though must go to Jo and Jennifer who turned up most days in the chat or comments for us all to enjoy their ideas and interaction. I’d love your thoughts on how I could encourage more interaction in the comments, chats or surveys. Just for fun I’ve added a survey here - it’s anonymous so I can’t see who provides answers. Simply click to participate.

Thanks to those who provided answers for the Christmas friends

The Christmas friends, being wooden toys, could not answer the daily questions by themselves so I’m very grateful to those who provided answers so I could put your words into the mouths of Holly, Snow, Angel and Star. You will hopefully have read your own answers in several of the daily emails. It made it a lot of fun for me to pull together the daily countdown and discover what the four friends were going to answer each day. They sure had some interesting answers!

Thanks to Caleb for the videos of the Christmas friends.

My son Caleb originally made these videos for 2019. He didn’t have his own business at that stage and fitted in creating and filming the scenes at night while he worked on his paid job during the days. There were hours of work put in to making each one and the platform we used in 2019 meant we used them on Instagram as a parallel to the Counting Down to Christmas emails which meant they weren’t seen by all of our email subscribers. With the ability to include videos in our Substack emails I was so extremely happy to give these videos another showing as they are stunning and so clever. I feel sad to say goodbye to them this year as I don’t think we’ll see them back here again. The wooden figurines have been keeping me company as I’ve been writing the countdown emails.

Thanks to Babs for photo bombing a video shoot

If our daughter’s cat, Babs hadn’t jumped into one of Caleb’s shoots while he was filming, we may never had a section for Leon. She inspired the idea of Detective Sam having a companion sidekick cat. Babs has played the part of Leon extremely well and it wasn’t hard to find a few photos with her trying to steal the Christmas limelight. In real life Babs is a companion cat for my daughter Sarah. She arrived into Sarah’s life when things were very hard for Sarah who at that stage was undiagnosed with Sensory Processing Disorder. Babs takes her job as companion, supporter and regulator very seriously. She’s extremely affectionate and social and loves to be in the centre of whatever is going on. Here’s one last photo of ‘Leon’ aka Babs' taken yesterday when we were opening gifts and Babs put herself right in the middle of the unwrapping for a Christmas Day nap.

A word about those Anagrams

This was a fun section to add. It came about because I really wanted to have something that offered three clues and I needed to be able to create something quickly. I found an Anagram Builder online and from there it was a case of trying to find the right combination of words from our daily emails to create an anagram that was loosely connected to our search for Christmas. There are several anagram builders available but I used wordplays.com You don’t need to be a subscriber or sign in. You can set the anagram builder to offer as many as 1000 possibilities. Type in the words you’d like to rearrange and click a button to get results. From there you can then build your own anagram. Why not try your own name and see what you can find. I just tried Caroline Bindon and came up with AN IRONIC BLONDE.

Accessing the archives

Paid subscribers will still have access to all the old posts until your paid subscription runs out. There’s now three years of Counting Down to Christmas available to paid subscribers. If you’re a paid subscriber you can find these old posts by clicking on the Archive button. It’s an easy way to catch up with any you missed this year, or if you have some time in this period of Christmas you might like to dip into one of our previous years.

Our theme for 2021 was built around Christmas music with Rhymes, Rhythms & Rituals

In 2022 our theme was built around our senses of smell and taste with A Pinch of Spice

What happens next?

I’m going to go a bit silent for a few months on this Substack although you’ll find me at The Seed Disperser or 5 Senses to Prayer. I’m toying with offering a middle of the year short email series as a bonus for paid subscribers here at Counting Down to Christmas. I’m still contemplating what that might look like and if there might be interest. I’d love to hear your thoughts. From about June or July I’ll be hoping to send out monthly updates on the writing process and background to next year’s Counting Down to Christmas. Next year Advent begins on Sunday 1st December with Christmas Day being on a Wednesday so our daily emails will be within these dates with a day or two either side.

Introducing next year’s theme

I have a working idea for next year with a working title, “A very Kiwi Christmas”. If you live in the northern part of Aotearoa you will likely have noticed that it’s been a particularly great year for pōhutukawa trees. Known as the New Zealand Christmas tree, they come into full flower in the month of December. We’ll use the flowering pōhutukawas to lead us to Christmas Day.

I’d love your help with taking photos of pōhutukawa trees in the next week or so while they’re still in full flower. I’ve managed to get a few but I don’t think I can have too many for what I have in mind - so if you see some beauties and can snap them and forward me photos I’d really appreciate the help.

It seems that the reason the pōhutukawa flowers are so vibrant and plentiful this year is due to the massive rainfalls we’ve had in the last twelve months. Out of the difficult times something beautiful has happened. I was thinking of the setting for the first Christmas and Jesus’ being born in turbulent and difficult times. Beautiful happenings in the midst of heavy times offer us hope.

In the same way that Jesus was born into a particular culture, place and time, and yet offers a story that is for people everywhere, I’m hoping next year’s countdown will be for all. I’m trying for a theme that is inclusive and engaging. It will strive to embrace, welcome, grow and stretch us.

One of my favourite passages about the first Christmas comes from John rather than the books of Matthew or Luke who write about the Nativity story. John is a little more poetical and mysterious.

In the beginning was the one
    who is called the Word.
The Word was with God
    and was truly God.
From the very beginning
    the Word was with God.

And with this Word,
    God created all things.
Nothing was made
    without the Word.
Everything that was created
    received its life from him,
and his life gave light
    to everyone.
The light keeps shining
    in the dark,
and darkness has never
    put it out.

John 1:1-5 (CEV)

In 2024 we’ll explore what it means to be followers of the Word along with words that help us in our faith journey. We’ll find the words in the Bible narrative of the first Christmas and explore these. We’ll look at some of those traditional Christmas words like hope, peace, joy and love. In keeping with the theme of ‘A very Kiwi Christmas’ my idea is to offer a bilingual approach with an emphasis on te reo Māori. There are so many beautiful concepts in te reo that resonate with the Christmas story and the Christian faith and I’d like to explore these next Advent. If you are fluent in te reo Māori or have a good understanding of te ao Māori, mātauranga Māori and tikanga, and would like to offer writing support or guidance I’d love to hear from you.

I know there are many subscribers from other countries, but I know there’s also fascination about the way we do things here and so while it will be written with a very Aotearoa New Zealand flavour, next year’s Counting Down to Christmas will be written for people everywhere.

Of course… this is all in my head right now… by the middle of next year when the writing should be well underway we’ll see if I’m still on this path!

And it’s a wrap for 2023

It’s taken me two mornings to write this… by the time you’re reading this last section I’m onto another breakfast of Christmas Day leftovers and another cup of tea!

I want to especially thank you (yes you - the one reading these words right now!) for being part of this journey with me over the last few weeks. It is a privilege to pop into your inbox each day and I sincerely and gratefully thank you for subscribing to my writing and for reading the daily emails. It means so much to me to have you journeying with me. I hope and pray that the daily emails have offered you some comfort, inspiration and encouragement over this season and have helped you to navigate your own journey with peace, joy, hope and love.

May God be with you today and all days

Caroline