Christmas: Birth, Death or Resurrection?

I recently asked a child what we celebrate at Christmas.

I thought by this point in their life they would be well enough exposed to have the concept of Christmas as celebrating Jesus birth down.

The answer started out accurately...

It has something to do with Jesus.

Yes, what about Jesus?

When he got on the cross?

No...

When he came back?

No...

When he was born.

Yes.

It made me think that as an adult I take a lot for granted. I wonder how often I fail to realize the impact of the fact that kids don't have the years of context and experience that adults have.

Kids (and all of us) need the stories told over and over.

Sometimes kids understand more than I expect, and sometimes less. I have to remember to be clear and not to assume too much in either direction.

As concerning as the child's lack of clarity about Christmas is, in some ways I feel quite encouraged by the responses. If you're going to be wrong about what we celebrate at Christmas, I'd say this child had great "wrong"(?) answers: Jesus' death and resurrection.

Even if we have some details to sort out, we're onto something here.

Come to think of it, that statement applies pretty well to a lot of us.

Godly Play Question

Note: I blog not just for the sake of talking, but for conversation. When I say question in the title of this post, I mean I'm interested in your response.

One of the things done in Godly Play is to snuff a candle in a way such that smoke builds up in a snuffer and can be seen wafting into the room. The language that goes with this action talks about the light being changed so that instead of being in just one place the light can be in every place. One is to notice the smoke getting thinner & thinner, filling the room, saying that even when the light can not be seen, it is there.

A lot of the concept behind that I understand and like.

But I can't come to terms with part of it that seems so contradictory as to be ineffective at best, with the potential to be damagingly counterproductive at worst.

As far as my common sense or admittedly limited scientific knowledge tells me, when you put the candle out, the light is NOT there, neither is it everywhere. The smoke is there and is dissipating through the room. But the smoke is not the light. The light is gone, done, dead, out. To claim that it is still there, only changed, and now everywhere, or filling the room seems just bogus. This seems so obvious to me, that I don't understand how we expect to claim otherwise and have people (mostly children in this case) believe it or use the image as an effective spiritual symbol.

What do you think? For those of you more experienced in Godly Play, what do you make of this? Am I misunderstanding something? Does this bother you? How have kids you've worked with responded to this?

I've taken the liberty to adapt what I say a bit. (I hope this doesn't leave experienced practitioners too aghast.) But I'm not fully satisfied with my adaptation either...I could explain why, but this post is a bit long already. Let me know if anyone is interested enough and I'll say more about that in another post.

Thanks for any insight.

More on the King

Each week's Godly Play Advent story involves retelling part of the story from each previous week of Advent.

My training in Godly Play is quite limited. I'm not sure if I did it right or not, but in the 2nd week of Advent I didn't repeat the part from Advent I about the king.

The child who included the king in their drawing last week asked why I hadn't told about the king.

Obiously the part about the king made a significant impression. Wow. Interesting, again!

Drawing the Story

I told the Godly Play story for Advent I on Sunday.

One child present made a drawing. It included representations of the materials used to tell the story and a picture of the king (with crown).

As I wrote that, I just put it together with the fact that this child had been a king for Halloween. Interesting.

Anyway, I was excited to see the evidence of engagement I think the picture represented.