ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

Available for over a year

Children all over the world, and especially across Europe are today, on his feast day, hoping that St Nicholas will bring them a present. The original Santa Claus, St Nicholas was a Christian bishop in Myra, modern day Turkey, and as we heard earlier in this programme, his bones are buried in Italy. The story goes that he learned of a poor family with three daughters, whose father couldn’t afford a dowry. Nicholas threw three sacks of money anonymously through the window of the family house, saving the daughters from what according to legend would have been a life of prostitution. It’s a thoroughly European legend, rooted in the story of our continent, giving rise to customs still celebrated today. But despite its 1600 year old pedigree, it’s a story that is surprisingly contemporary too. I was thinking of St Nicholas – as yesterday I stood in our church with volunteers and the artist Arabella Dorman, holding salvaged clothes from refugee camps in Lesvos, Greece. Over Christmas, hundreds of these salvaged clothes will hang in the nave of our church in a state of suspension, bringing to life the experience of refugees escaping war, whose lives are stuck, unable to go home, unable to move on. And yesterday our volunteers were in tears, unpacking tiny pairs of jeans, colourful sweatshirts, torn teeshirts, little shoes. 1600 years ago, Nicholas saved three young girls from what we now call trafficking, from sex slavery. The UN refugee agency estimates that 10,000 children have simply disappeared in our continent during this forced migration of people. The clothes we unpacked yesterday, now empty, are highly evocative of the young people who were, just a few months ago, wearing them. And we will try to make a difference, in the name of our faith, in the name of St Nicholas. But when we sing all the traditional Christmas carols in the presence of these empty clothes, they themselves become both a protest and lament at the waste of life that we say was made sacred at Christmas, the waste of potential as their owners live in limbo in the camps of our continent. Doing this will give new meaning to the thing we always say: that Christmas is really for the children. But what silenced us yesterday was a Babygro covered in teddy bears, without doubt, belonging to an anonymous little boy brought across on one of those flimsy boats to an uncertain future. On the little hood was a message that it felt as if his parents were sending directly to us. Something they knew about their baby son, hoped for him, dreamed he would become. Where is his new life? we thought, and we hope he’s safe….as we read the words on his hood; Prince Charming.