WE'VE had Black Friday and now, I suppose, the question on some people’s minds will be whether we are going to have a white Christmas.

Some people dream about it, they say. I’m tempted to break into song.

We’ve imported many things from America and Black Friday is the latest. What we don’t do here is celebrate the day before as Thanksgiving.

That’s a shame because it’s good to give thanks for what we have before we rush off to buy new things.

In this country we have so much to give thanks for, even in this age of austerity. A glance around the globe – at West Africa, where so many people have died from Ebola, for example – reminds us forcibly of that.

Many Christian communities which have celebrated Christmas in Syria and Iraq since the time of Jesus himself will not get the chance to do so this year. How fortunate we are in our health care and our freedoms.

I expect some of the things bought on Black Friday at knock-down prices (and it wasn’t only the prices that were knocked down in some places) will be wrapped up and given as Christmas presents. I hope so. Christmas presents are a wonderful thing. They let the people to whom we give them know that we care for them, that we love them.

At Christmas we celebrate God’s great love for us in Jesus and this should be the greatest thanksgiving celebration ever.  The gift God gives us in Jesus tells us more powerfully than any other gift could how much God loves us.

Being loved is the greatest gift that any of us can be given and to be loved by the God who created everything that there is, the one ‘who flung stars into space’ as a popular hymn puts it, is a gift beyond words.

If your mood is black, whether through missing out on the Black Friday bargains or for any other reason,  I hope it will be lifted in thanksgiving this Christmas not just by some lovely Christmas gifts – though I hope you receive some of those – but also by remembering that, in Jesus, you have been given the greatest gift of all.  

May you feel embraced by his love this Christmas and throughout the coming year.

Bishop John Inge