I have a friend who teaches in the upper peninsula in Michigan. He has one of those schools that run from kindergarten all the way up through eighth grade, including special ed. One of his students was intellectually slow, couldn’t do very well in classes. And when Christmas Pageant time came he wanted to have a part in the Pageant. What’s more, he wanted a speaking part. He wouldn’t settle for anything less.

So they made into the innkeeper. They figured he could handle that because all he had to do was say, “No room,” twice: once before Mary spoke, once after she spoke. The night of the Pageant, Mary knocks on the door he opens the door, and he says in a brusque fashion, “No room!” Mary says, “But I’m sick, and I’m cold, and I’m going to have a baby, and if you don’t give me a place to sleep, my baby will be born in the cold, cold night.”

He just stood there. The boy behind him nudged him and said, “No room, No room, say, “No room.’” And finally, he turned and he said, “I know what I’m supposed to say, but she can have my room.”

–Anthony Campolo in William H. Willimon Ed, Sermons from Duke Chapel: Voices from “A Great Towering Church” (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), p.294

Trina Schart Hyman's illustration for 'A Child's Christmas In Wales' by Dylan Thomas. pic.twitter.com/iZ4vGIiBXW

— Into The Forest Dark (@ElliottBlackwe3) December 25, 2025

You may listen directly here:

Or you may download it there.

Or watch the video here:

Bartolomé Estebán Murillo, "The Nativity" (c. 1670)#Art pic.twitter.com/rh8f6g4g6G

— Campbell F. Scribner (@ScribnerUMCP) December 24, 2025

Let’s apply the spiritual sense of the Christmas story to our lives. For that story happens not only once, in history, but also many times in each individual’s soul. Christ comes to the world but He also comes to each of us. Advent happens over and over again.

Christmas is so familiar that we sometimes wonder whether anything fresh and true can be said about it.

But there is a way to explore its meaning that may seem new to us today, yet is in fact quite traditional, dating back to the Middle Ages and the ancient Fathers of the Church.
Modern interpreters often argue about whether a given Scripture passage should be interpreted literally or symbolically. Medieval writers would question the “either/or” approach. They thought a passage could have as many as four “right” interpretations, one literal and three symbolic.

These were: (1) the historical or literal, which is the primary sense on which the others all depend; (2) the prophetic sense when an Old Testament event foreshadows its New Testament fulfillment; (3) the moral or spiritual sense, when events and characters in a story correspond to elements in our own lives; and (4) the eschatological sense, when a scene on earth foreshadows something of heavenly glory.

This symbolism is legitimate because it doesn’t detract from the historical, literal sense, but builds on and expands it. It’s based on the theologically sound premise that history too symbolizes, or points beyond itself, for God wrote three books, not just one: nature and history as well as Scripture. The story of history is composed not only of “events,” but of words, signs and symbols. This is unfamiliar to us only because we have lost a sense of depth and exchanged it for a flat, one-dimensional, “bottom-line” mentality in which everything means only one thing.

Let’s try to recapture the riches of this lost worldview by applying the spiritual sense of the Christmas story to our lives. For that story happens not only once, in history, but also many times in each individual’s soul. Christ comes to the world–but He also comes to each of us. Advent happens over and over again.

Read it all.

Francesco Granacci (1469 – 30 November 1543) was an Italian painter..Adoration of the Christ Child,c.1500 pic.twitter.com/DSVzOXgPzz

— Yiannis Einstein-Ιωάννης Αρβανιτάκης (@yianniseinstein) May 1, 2024

Christmas itself is by grace. It could never have survived our own blindness and depredations otherwise. It could never have happened otherwise. Perhaps it is the very wildness and strangeness of the grace that has led us to try to tame it. We have tried to make it habitable. We have roofed it and furnished it. We have reduced it to an occasion we feel at home with, at best a touching and beautiful occasion, at worst a trite and cloying one. But if the Christmas event in itself is indeed–as a matter of cold, hard fact–all its cracked up to be, then even at best our efforts are misleading.

The Word became flesh. Ultimate Mystery born with a skull you could crush one-handed. Incarnation. It is not tame. It is not beautiful. It is uninhabitable terror. It is unthinkable darkness riven with unbearable light. Agonized laboring led to it, vast upheavals of intergalactic space, time split apart, a wrenching and tearing of the very sinews of reality itself. You can only cover your eyes and shudder before it, before this: “God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God…who for us and for our salvation,” as the Nicene Creed puts it, “came down from heaven.”

Came down. Only then do we dare uncover our eyes and see what we can see. It is the Resurrection and the Life she holds in her arms. It is the bitterness of death he takes at her breast.

—Whistling in the Dark (New York: HarperCollins, 1988), pp. 30-31

Among all Nativity scenes in art history, I believe this one is the most beautiful✨

“The Adoration of the Child” (or “Nativity”) by Gerard van Honthorst, known in Italy as Gherardo delle Notti, painted in 1620

This masterpiece can be admired in Florence⚜️ at the Uffizi Gallery pic.twitter.com/Q286baTdh6

— Mambo Italiano (@mamboitaliano__) December 2, 2025

O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

The wolf supermoon over Argyle Street in the west of Glasgow.#glasgow #supermoon #wolfmoon #argylestreet #glasgowtoday pic.twitter.com/n8bEQJIwcH

— This Is My Glasgow (@is_glasgow) January 4, 2026

Most merciful God, for whose chosen handmaid and her Holy Babe there was no room in the inn at Bethlehem: Help us all by thy Spirit to make room for the Christ in our common days, that his peace and joy may fill our hearts, and his love flow through our lives to the blessing of others; for his name’s sake.

—Prayers for the Christian Year (SCM, 1964)

Time we spent pic.twitter.com/1ifkDdFikm

— Paul Willson (@pauljwillson) January 3, 2026

“Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you Good News of a great joy . . . This day is born the Savior,” that is, he who, as Son of God and Son of the Father, has traveled (in obedience to the Father) the path that leads away from the Father and into the darkness of the world. Behind him omnipotence and freedom; before, powerlessness, bonds and obedience. Behind him the comprehensive divine vision; before him the prospect of the meaninglessness of death on the Cross between two criminals, Behind him the bliss of life with the Father; before him, grievous solidarity with all who do not know the Father, do not want to know him and deny his existence. Rejoice then, for God himself has passed this way! The Son took with him the awareness of doing the Father’s will. He took with him the unceasing prayer that the Father’s will would be done on the dark earth as in the brightness of heaven. He took with him his rejoicing that the Father had hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to babes, to the simple and the poor. “I am the way,” and this way is “the truth” for you; along this way you will find “the life.” Along “the way” that I am you will learn to lose your life in order to find it; you will learn to grow beyond yourselves and your insincerity into a truth that is greater than you are. From a worldly point of view everything may seem very dark; your dedication may seem unproductive and a failure. But do not be afraid: you are on God’s path. “Let not your hearts be troubled: believe in God; believe also in me.” I am walking on ahead of you and blazing the trail of Christian love for you. It leads to your most inaccessible brother, the person most forsaken by God. But it is the path of divine love itself. You are on the right path. All who deny themselves in order to carry out love’s commission are on the right path.

Miracles happen along this path. Apparently insignificant miracles, noticed by hardly anyone. The very finding of a Child wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger—is this not a miracle in itself? Then there is the miracle when a particular mission, hidden in a person’s heart, really reaches its goal, bringing God’s peace and joy where there were nothing but despair and resignation; when someone succeeds in striking a tiny light in the midst of an overpowering darkness. When joy irradiates a heart that no longer dared to believe in it. Now and again we ourselves are assured that the angel’s word we are trying to obey will bring us to the place where God’s Word and Son is already made man. We are assured that, in spite of all the noise and nonsense, today, December 25, is Christmas just as truly as two millennia ago. Once and for all God has started out on his journey toward us, and nothing, till the world’s end, will stop him from coming to us and abiding in us.

Read it all.

Some photos I took on a misty evening in Elburg , The Netherlands last week with some Christmas decorations. pic.twitter.com/0L5KINpi9Z

— Albert Dros (@albertdrosphoto) January 1, 2026

(A new carol written for the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge in 2012)

Lyrics:

Deep in the cold of winter,
Darkness and silence were everywhere;
Softly and clearly, there came through the stillness

a wonderful sound to hear:
All bells in paradise I heard them ring,
Sounding in majesty the news that they bring;
All bells in paradise I heard them ring,
Welcoming our Saviour, born on earth a heavenly King.
All bells in paradise I heard them ring:
‘Glory to God on high’ the angel voices sing.

Lost in awe and wonder,
Doubting I asked what this sign might be:
Christ our Messiah revealed in a stable,
A marvellous sight to see.
All bells in paradise I heard them ring,
Sounding in majesty the news that they bring;
All bells in paradise I heard them ring,
Welcoming our Saviour, born on earth a heavenly King.

He comes down in peace, a child in humility,
The keys to his kingdom belong to the poor;
Before him shall kneel the kings with their treasures,
gold incense and myrrh.
All bells in paradise I heard them ring,
Sounding in majesty the news that they bring;
All bells in paradise I heard them ring,
Welcoming our Saviour, born on earth a heavenly King.
All bells in paradise I heard them ring:
‘Glory to God on high’ the angel voices sweetly sing.

Enjoy it all.

This mediator must represent God to humankind, and humankind to God. He must have points of contact with both God and humanity, and yet be distinguishable from them both. The central Christian idea of the incarnation, which expresses the belief that Jesus is both God and man, divine and human, portrays Jesus as the perfect mediator between God and human beings. He, and he alone, is able to redeem us and reconcile us to God.

—“I Believe”: Exploring the Apostles’ Creed (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1998), p. 48

Giorgione’s ‘Adoration of the Shepherds’ (1505/1510) pic.twitter.com/xDtoi805WA

— jacob eigengain (@jacobeigengain) January 7, 2024

His solution consisted, first, in experiencing them. The god-man suffers too, with patience. Evil and death can no longer be entirely imputed to him since he suffers and dies. The night on Golgotha is so important in the history of man only because, in its shadows, the divinity, ostensibly abandoning its traditional privileges, lived through to the end, despair included, the agony of death. Thus is explained the Lama sabachthani and the frightful doubt of Christ in agony.

–Albert Camus, Essais [Paris: Gallimard, 1965], E.T. p. 144, quoted by yours truly in the Sunday sermon

"I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year."
– Charles Dickens pic.twitter.com/a2h1Djta2C

— gregorio catarino (@gregcatarino1) December 21, 2025

O God our Father, who by the glorious birth of thy Son didst enlighten the darkness of the world: We pray that the light of his presence may shine more and more in the lives of men; that being filled with his spirit of goodwill, the nations may inherit that gift of peace which he came to bring. We ask in his name.

Merry Christmas Eve

(Christmas Eve, 1878, by J. Hoover & Son) pic.twitter.com/6yzRV4SKvv

— Vicente Fox Mulder (@WASPmexicano) December 24, 2024

O God, to whom glory is sung in the highest, while on earth peace is proclaimed to men of good will: Grant that good will to us thy servants, cleanse us from all our sins, and give perpetual peace to us and to all people; through thy mercy, O God, who art blessed, and dost govern all things, world without end.

Bernardino Luini — Nativity and Adoration of the Shepherds pic.twitter.com/gXWuqTiQOK

— Bugatti.W16 (@barclain) October 20, 2016

God with us means more than God over or side by side with us, before or behind us. It means more than His divine being in even the most intimate active connection with our human being otherwise peculiar to Him. At this point, at the heart of the Christian message and in relation to the event of which it speaks, it means that God has made himself the one who fulfills his redemptive will. It means that He Himself in His own person at His own cost but also on His own initiative has become the inconceivable Yet and Nevertheless of this event, and so its clear and well-founded and legitimate, its true and holy and righteous Therefore. It means that God has become man in order as such, but in divine sovereignty, to take up our case. What takes place in the work of inconceivable mercy is, therefore, the free overruling of God, but it is not an arbitrary overlooking and ignoring, not an artificial bridging, covering over or hiding, but a real closing of the breach, gulf and abyss between God and us for which we are responsible. At the very point where we refuse and fail, offending and provoking God, making ourselves impossible before Him and in that way missing our destiny, treading under foot our dignity, forfeiting our right, losing our salvation and hopelessly compromising our creaturely being at that very point God Himself intervenes as man.

—Church Dogmatics (IV.1) [E.T. By Geoffrey Bromiley and Thomas Torrance of the German Original] (London: T and T Clark, 1956), page 12

Nativity, 1792
Benjamin West pic.twitter.com/18q4DyMTKU

— Juan NAVARRO (@jnavarrosimon) December 20, 2024

And because of His visitation, we may no longer desire God as if He were lacking: our redemption is no longer a question of pursuit but of surrender to Him who is always and everywhere present. Therefore at every moment we pray that, following Him, we may depart from our anxiety into His peace.

–From Simeon in the Christmas Oratorio

Philippe de Champaigne, The Adoration of the Shepherds, ca.1640 pic.twitter.com/LatSDghLD3

— Solas (@solas_na_greine) December 12, 2025

Listen to it all. A reminder of the English translation of the words:

O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the new-born Lord,
lying in a manger!
Blessed is the Virgin whose womb
was worthy to bear
Christ the Lord.
Alleluia!

Man’s maker was made man,
that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breast;
that the Bread might hunger,
the Fountain thirst,
the Light sleep,
the Way be tired on its journey;
that the Truth might be accused of false witness,
the Teacher be beaten with whips,
the Foundation be suspended on wood;
that Strength might grow weak;
that the Healer might be wounded;
that Life might die.

– Augustine of Hippo (Sermons 191.1)

Guido Lanfranco’s ‘Midnight Mass for Christmas’ invites us into one of Malta’s most cherished festive rituals. The artist’s brushstrokes capture the soft glow of candles, the hush of village churches, and the community gathering in hopeful celebration. pic.twitter.com/U7AQkxanSR

— Heritage Malta (@heritagemalta) December 24, 2025

Merciful and most loving God, by whose will and bountiful gift thine eternal Son humbled himself that he might exalt mankind, and became flesh that he might renew in us the divine image: Perfect us in thy likeness, and bring us at last to rejoice in beholding thy beauty, and, with all thy saints, to glorify thy grace; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

—Prayers for the Christian Year (SCM, 1964)

A diagram of the interlocking seasons: the year is turning

BL Harley MS 4940; Matfre Ermengaud's Breviari d'amor; 14th century; France (Toulouse?); f.48r@BLMedieval pic.twitter.com/rcKmioPw61

— Ennius (@red_loeb) December 30, 2025

By stating that Jesus is “born of woman”—this Mary (as both St. Matthew and St. Luke attest)—St. Paul insists that Jesus is most emphatically human, the “firstborn of all creation. That this Mary is at the same time a virgin prevents the birth of Jesus from being reduced to what we know or can reproduce from our own experience.

Life that is unmistakably human life is before us here, a real baby from an actual mother’s womb; there is also miracle here, and mystery that cannot be brushed aside in our attempts to bring the operations of God, let alone our own lives, under our control.

The miracle of the virgin birth, maintained from the earliest times in the church and confessed in its creeds, is, in Karl Barth’s straightforward phrase, a “summons to reverence and worship….” Barth maintained that the one-sided views of those who questioned or denied that Jesus was “born of the virgin Mary” are “in the last resort to be understood only as coming from dread of reverence and only as invitation to comfortable encounter with an all too near or all too far-off God.”

–Eugene Peterson in God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas ed. Greg Pennoyer and Gregory Wolfe (Massachusettes, Paraclete Press, 2007), p., 5

Merry Christmas!
(Art by E. H. Shepard) pic.twitter.com/POqS9B5dIv

— Into The Forest Dark (@ElliottBlackwe3) December 25, 2025

Enjoy it all from the London Symphony Orchestra.

One is very often asked at present whether we could not have a Christianity stripped, or, as people who asked it say, ‘freed’ from its miraculous elements, a Christianity with the miraculous elements suppressed. Now, it seems to me that precisely the one religion in the world, or, at least the only one I know, with which you could not do that is Christianity. In a religion like Buddhism, if you took away the miracles attributed to Gautama Buddha in some very late sources, there would be no loss; in fact, the religion would get on very much better without them because in that case the miracles largely contradict the teaching. Or even in the case of a religion like Mohammedanism, nothing essential would be altered if you took away the miracles. You could have a great prophet preaching his dogmas without bringing in any miracles; they are only in the nature of a digression, or illuminated capitals. But you cannot possibly do that with Christianity, because the Christian story is precisely the story of one grand miracle, the Christian assertion being that what is beyond all space and time, what is uncreated, eternal, came into nature, into human nature, descended into His own universe, and rose again, bringing nature up with Him. It is precisely one great miracle. If you take that away there nothing specifically Christian left. There may be many admirable human things which Christianity shares with all other systems in the world, but there would be nothing specifically Christian. Conversely, once you have accepted that, then you will see that all other well-established Christian miracles–because, of course, there are ill-established Christian miracles; there are Christian legends just as much as there are heathen legends, or modern journalistic legends–you will see that all the well-established Christian miracles are part of it, that they all either prepare for, or exhibit, or result from the Incarnation. Just as every natural event exhibits the total character of the natural universe at a particular point and space of time; so every miracle exhibits the character of the Incarnation. Now, if one asks whether that central grand miracle in Christianity is itself probable or improbable, of course, quite clearly you cannot be applying Hume’s kind of probability. You cannot mean a probability based on statistics according to which the more often a thing has happened, the more likely it is to happen again (the more often you get indigestion from eating a certain food, the more probable it is, if you eat it again, that you again have indigestion). Certainly the Incarnation cannot be probable in that sense. It is of its very nature to have happened only once. But then it is of the very nature of the history of this world to have happened only once; and if the Incarnation happened at all, it is the central chapter of that history. It is improbable in the same way in which the whole of nature is improbable, because it is only there once, and will happen only once.

–C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), Miracles (cited by yours truly in the Sunday sermon)

John Ferguson Weir – "Christmas Eve" (1865) pic.twitter.com/v4gApSMvXY

— Museum (@DailyClassicArt) December 25, 2024

Grant us, O God, such love and wonder that, with humble shepherds, wise men and pilgrims unknown, we may come and adore the holy Babe, the heavenly King, and with our gifts worship and serve him, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Little Bay Islands pic.twitter.com/8AunYCzfBO

— Mike Parsons (@mikep_lbi) December 30, 2025

Seek not in courts, nor palaces,

Nor royal curtains draw;

But search the stable,

see your God, Extended on the straw.

–William Billings, Methinks I See a Heav’nly Host,” in The Singing Master’s Assistant (1778)

Happy Christmas from the Yorkshire Wolds.
( photo taken a few weeks ago , see you after the holidays , best wishes James ) pic.twitter.com/GGEGOYPRSh

— Yorkshire Wolds Weather (@WeatherWolds) December 23, 2025

‘The idea that there’s a force of love and logic behind the universe is overwhelming to start with, if you believe it. Actually, maybe even far-fetched to start with, but the idea that that same love and logic would choose to describe itself as a baby born in %$#$ and straw and poverty is genius, and brings me to my knees, literally. To me, as a poet, I am just in awe of that. It makes some sort of poetic sense. It’s the thing that makes me a believer, although it didn’t dawn on me for many years.’

–Bono as quoted in Cathleen Falsani, The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), p.10

'He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word'
Hebrews 1: 3 pic.twitter.com/RsLwFLF6gq

— Westminster Abbey (@wabbey) December 24, 2025

Most merciful God, who hast so loved the world as to give thine only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life: Vouchsafe unto us, we humbly pray thee, the precious gift of faith, whereby we may know that the Son of God is come; and, being rooted and grounded in the mystery of the Word made flesh, may have power to overcome the world, and gain the blessed immortality of heaven; through the merits of the same incarnate Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end.

Guten Morgen mit einer kleinen Winterimpression, heute aus Zaanse Schans.#Niederlande pic.twitter.com/KuNkxxtFdj

— Thomas Stiegler (@StieglerThomas) December 29, 2025

Almighty God, you have poured upon us the new light of your incarnate Word: Grant that this light, kindled in our hearts, may shine forth in our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Morning everyone I hope you are well. A chilly dog walk yesterday morning as dawn started to break over Waterhead. Have a great day.#LakeDistrict pic.twitter.com/pGK2xI05Cy

— Rod Hutchinson (@lakesrhino) December 28, 2025

Almighty God, who hast revealed the glory of thy love in the in the face of Jesus Christ, and called us by him to live as thy children: Fill our hearts, as we remember his nativity, with the gladness of this great redemption; that we may join in the heavenly song of glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, and goodwill towards men; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord.

'For you are great and do wondrous things; you alone are God'
Psalm 86: 10 pic.twitter.com/CLMPFFNltW

— Westminster Abbey (@wabbey) December 26, 2025

..[Jesus of Nazareth] was not a kind of demon pretending to be human; he was in every respect a genuine living man. He was not merely a man so good as to be “like God”–he was God.

Now, this is not just a pious commonplace: it is not a commonplace at all. For what it means is this, among other things: that for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death he [God] had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was a man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.

—Creed or Chaos? (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company,1949), page 4 (with special thanks to blog reader and friend WW)

The Nativity #Nativity
BL Yates Thompson 2; The Ottobeuren Collectar'; Germany, S. (Ottobeuren); 12th century; f.57v@BLMedieval pic.twitter.com/mrNGISDFqq

— Ennius (@red_loeb) December 24, 2025

Lyrics:

Good people all, this Christmas time
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done
In sending his beloved son
With Mary holy we should pray
To God with love this Christmas Day
In Bethlehem upon that morn
There was a blessed Messiah born
Near Bethlehem did shepherds keep
Their flocks of lambs and feeding sheep
To whom God’s angels did appear
Which put the shepherds in great fear
‘Prepare and go, ‘ the angels said
‘To Bethlehem, be not afraid
For there you’ll find, this happy morn
A princely babe, sweet Jesus born
With thankful heart and joyful mind
The shepherds went, this babe to find
And as God’s angel had foretold
They did our saviour Christ behold
Within a manger he was laid
And by his side the virgin maid
Attending on the Lord of life
Who came on earth to end all strife
Good people all, this Christmas time
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done
In sending his beloved Son
With Mary holy we should pray
To God with love this Christmas day
In Bethlehem upon that morn
There was a blessed Messiah born

The crucial significance of the cradle at Bethlehem lies in its place in the sequence of steps down that led the Son of God to the cross of Calvary, and we do not understand it till we see it in this context…the taking of manhood by the Son is set before us in a way which shows us how we should ever view it–not simply as a marvel of nature, but rather as a wonder of grace.

–J. I. Packer, Knowing God, (Downer’s Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press; 20th Anniversary ed.), p.42

Hark the Herald Angels sing glory to the new-born King; pray for peace on earth and goodwill to all.

Christmas Blessings from all at York Minster. pic.twitter.com/bRvVNdnTkD

— York Minster (@York_Minster) December 25, 2025

26 Dec: The feast of St Stephen, the first Christian martyr remembered for his charity, is also called Boxing Day, from the custom of giving alms or gift boxes to the poor and to workers in thanks. In the “Calendar of Flowers,” purple heather is his dedicated flower. #BoxingDay pic.twitter.com/6aKf4IcGUA

— VenetiaJane's Garden (@VenetiaJane) December 25, 2025