Advent Calendar Day Nine

Winter is very picturesque. The photo above is beautiful. BUT winter is also deathly cruel. Stay outside in the wrong clothes in the scene above and you would die of hypothermia. The trees look dead, there's not a living creature to be found.
The Christmas story is one of hardship: a baby born- where? a palace? a home? No! In a stable, a place fit for animals. And does Jesus live a normal life as a baby? No! He has a king try to kill him so he becomes a refugee.

An angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get up," he said, "take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him." So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son." When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.

However we try to sanitise the Christmas story, the manger was rough and splintered, one of the gifts given to Jesus was myrrh which was an embalming material and a king wanted Jesus dead. Cute it isn't.
Let's try and remember the grittier side of Christmas today.

Chocolate: Fry's Turkish Delight
Weather: Always winter, never Christmas
Book: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe