At my lowest in 2016 I believed that God himself was punishing me for 40-plus years of ill doings, flawed character and anything else suppressed by my over-active conscience that had been in denial. For most of the year I thought I had entered a deep pit mine with a one way ticket in hand. The euphoria of the Christmas holiday season quickly faded as I walked through the front door back to my reality. By the time the Easter holiday arrived I had convinced myself that I would

It should be a good time to get each of the kids to write a prayer now that they’ve cleaned, crafted, reflected and donated their way through the holidays. All I know at this point is that their prayers will start with “Dear God” and end with “Amen”. How they choose to fill in the blanks is up to them. The main pic is from the Advent Calendar I made this year.

tearfund.org has the most amazing Nativity Play script for either Narrated or Dialogue versions of kids plays. I’ll be using their version as the basis for our family puppet show today. Narrator enters the stage INTRODUCTION: (THIS INTRODUCTION COULD BE ‘PERFORMED’ BY A MEETING LEADER OR BY THE PERSON PERFORMING AS THE NARRATOR) We are about to enjoy a story that has been told and retold for two thousand years. The Nativity reveals something very special about God – that he w

This blog series has been one of the best for me personally so far. I have learnt so much from my friends, about their religions and way of life. The friend who I’ve asked to share his story in this post is honestly one of the nicest people I’ve ever known. I remember, very clearly, 20 years ago when my then boyfriend, now husband, was admitted to hospital over the Christmas holiday period while we were stationed at one of the Sun International properties where we used to wor

Preetika Ajoodha My friend Preetika Ajoodha was born and raised in Johannesburg Fordsburg into a Gujarati Hindu family. She is one of few remaining people who really love LONG phone calls and will always volunteer to call you back – she works for a major Telecomms network which apparently affords generous privileges in this regard. This is Preetika’s story about how she celebrates the holidays: I strongly believe that religion in any household is led by the mum in the home. I

I’ve always been curious about how the faithless approach Christmas and the December holidays in general. Is Christmas not a rather confusing time for atheists? I mean, not being invited to a Christmas party because if you don’t believe then it doesn’t exist? Do their children not get presents as their parents have rejected any religious sentiment associated with the period? Do atheist kids kindly excuse themselves from participating in school Christmas concerts? Are atheists

Last week I posted Christmas with a capital C which is how I sum up my approach to this religious event. In the article I wondered how other people regard and enjoy the overall December holiday period. My husband is not religious. I don’t think he’s an Atheist but committing to a religion, or spirituality in general, is not, and never has been, a priority for him. In fact, whenever we are asked to complete forms requesting “Religion: Father” on any forms, we have inserted jus

I was born Catholic and have remained Catholic ever since. Celebrating Christmas in the Catholic tradition is all I’ve ever known. I love it this way. Working in corporate for many years we were always debating what type of message to put out over the December holiday period; is it Merry Christmas with a capital C or Xmas? Is it about the holiday period in general so that all religions are included in the message? The bigger the corporate the bigger the debate I suppose. The