Advent 9

[mylodon]

It's the little drummer boy behind the door today. Here's why...

Many years back I was waiting at the doctor's and picked up a Christmas edition of a 'Christian' magazine. Reading the letters page, I found somebody complaining about 'Little Drummer Boy', and similar seasonal songs, and saying they shouldn't be sung because they didn't reflect the nativity story as recorded in the gospels. No drummer boys there. That letter made me cross on many counts, one of which I'll share today.

That blinkered obsession with the biblical text is neither helpful or sensible. While I'm not for a minute saying that a drummer boy was present in the stable, plenty of other things had to be there that don't get a mention. Jesus' umbilical cord and the cutting of it, for example. As an author, I know that we have to present a shorthand of people's lives, not mentioning every meal they took or every time they went to the loo. In the same way the gospel writers would have focussed on certain elements of Jesus' life and left others out - but absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

There is not a single mention of cats anywhere in the bible. Do we for a moment think that none of the families featured had a friendly feline slinking its way through the house? Should we therefore not mention cats in anything to do with biblical times/characters/events?

Daft isn't it?