大象传媒

EATING TOGETHER

Good morning.聽 If you - like the majority of people in Britain today - don鈥檛 often sit down at a table to eat, then I bet you make an exception at Christmas.聽 I knew a family who admitted that the only day in the year that their 17 year old joined the family for a meal was Christmas Day.聽 Usually he just ate on the move or grazed from the fridge.

This trend has led to architects designing houses without formal dining rooms.聽 So I imagine all over the country this week there鈥檒l be people trying to work out how they鈥檙e going to sit the extended family down to eat Christmas dinner.聽 Another worry to add to all the others in our attempt to create the perfect Christmas.

But maybe you don鈥檛 really need the dining-room - even on Christmas Day.聽 At that famous Christmas truce in 1914, soldiers on both sides of the conflict not only played football and sang songs, but they shared food - without a civilised dining table in sight.聽 German and English soldiers (and a few French and Belgians, too) came together for the strangest of Christmas dinners: chocolate, whisky, beer 鈥� even bully beef and jam.

A German soldier wrote: "This was war... but there was no trace of enmity between us" and on the English side one of the officers said: "The whole spirit of Christmas seemed to be there.....鈥� Another wrote in a letter home: 鈥淐hristmas had made the bitterest foes - friends.鈥�

At the heart of the Christmas message is the imperative to 鈥榣ove your enemies鈥� and if 100 years ago sworn enemies - people who hours before were trying to kill each other - could come together for that extraordinary Christmas meal, then it shouldn鈥檛 be difficult for us to sit down and celebrate with even the most difficult of our relations.

Lord, Christmas is a joyful - but also a stressful - time.聽 When we sit down to share a meal together with friends and family, may we put aside our differences and welcome even those we find hard to love to share our celebrations.聽 Amen.