蜜芽传媒

Art Historian, Dr Jim Harris

There鈥檚 a lot of new stuff around our house after Christmas. 聽New clothes, new toys, new smells, new novelty foodstuffs, and yet somehow, a couple of days later the place contrives to feel weary and old and hungover.

So I鈥檝e been doing the laundry. Yesterday, I did six loads of washing, clean, dried, folded and put away.聽 No ironing, though. 聽I鈥檓 not Superman.

I changed the beds, cleared the detritus from the boys鈥� rooms, emptied the bins and hoovered throughout.聽 I saved the house.聽 Maybe I am Superman鈥� The house certainly needed saving. 聽Like most of our homes it was covered with a layer of Christmas so thick you had to peel it off. And now it鈥檚 clean again, the tree looks less like it鈥檚 suffering from seasonal-affective disorder and the whole place feels fresh. 聽Which, for an anally-retentive tidiness obsessive like me is a positively life-changing experience.

Now, we tend to think of New Year as the moment for renewal. 聽We make resolutions, we promise to be better, healthier, kinder, to work harder, eat less butter, somehow to save ourselves. 聽But yesterday made me think again about that.

The Christmas stories in the bible cover many of the things that feature in our own seasonal experiences: family, anxiety dreams, presents, terrible journeys and unexpected guests. 聽But what pops up in all of them is the idea that Jesus, that tiny little scrap wrapped in rags in a cowshed, is here to save us.

And being saved isn鈥檛 just about one thing stopping.聽 It鈥檚 about a better thing starting: we鈥檙e saved from something and into something - from weariness into rest, from bitterness into love, from death into life.

So I reckon Christmas is the moment for the fresh start. New Year is just an accident of the calendar.聽 Because in among all the sheer weight of traffic - presents, food, drink, all the joy of catching up with loved ones - and all the aggravation of catching up with loved ones 鈥� Christmas offers the chance to save and be saved, by the odd gentle word, by the kindness of a gift, by the generosity of a meal and a bottle of wine shared.

And after we鈥檙e saved, we can tidy up.