I feel a great affinity with Buster the Boxer, I think we both have a tendency to some over excitement and perhaps jumping the gun a little bit. In the advert the trampoline, this perfect gift, wasn’t entirely meant for Buster, or indeed the other woodland critters, but they did get their first, and blimey did they enjoy it?!

For me, Buster and all the other little fluffies who have a bounce on the trampoline are like the shepherds and the wisemen. This promised gift, this expected messiah was big news for the Israelites. They knew the history, they were the chosen people, so good upstanding religiously observant Jews should be first in line to see the baby right?

Except, no, that isn’t what happened, we know the story all too well. Some roughty tufty, smelly and probably a bit sweary shepherds were personally invited down from the hills to come and see the baby, to witness this gift first. Then who joined them? Foreigners! People who weren’t even from here saw the signs, understood what they meant and knew where to look.

And that is the whole point isn’t it. This long awaited gift, this promised Messiah is a gift for absolutely everyone, regardless of who they are, where they came from, what they believed and what other people thought of them. Just like that trampoline, this baby boy, Jesus was a gift that everybody would love.

I wonder if you’ve ever thought much about Jesus’ earthly family. We’re probably all aware of Mary and Joseph, but the rest of the family don’t really get a look in the Christmas story, or anywhere actually. There’s mentions of brothers elsewhere in the Gospels that not all Christians manage to agree on, but that’s about it.

We don’t even have much about the holy family past Jesus’ birth and before his 30s. Just a story about Jesus when he was 12 recorded only in Luke. But we do know that this little family endured huge journeys in their life together, incredibly dangerous upheavals for anyone, let alone new parents with a young child.

Our Nativity stories start with that well known journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, a long and probably uncomfortable journey for Mary and Joseph. But the birth narratives end with a journey too, a far more panicked and dangerous one. Mary , Joseph and the child Jesus flee Herod’s attempt to kill Jesus before he ever had a chance to say or do anything revolutionary. Time is spent away, in safety in Egypt. But they don’t stay there for ever.

By the time Jesus’ public ministry begins the family are back in Nazareth, so at some point, somewhere along the way, there must have been a home coming. The little family, although they definitely weren’t teddy bears travelling on a plane, came home to their wider family. I wonder what that home coming looked like.

This Christmas as we travel our own festive journeys, whether they be across the world, or just round the corner, and s we spend even just a little bit of time with people we love, perhaps we could choose to remember that little holy family and those first dangerous Christmas journeys.

It is a bit weird to think that at the heart of Christmas and indeed the entire Christian faith hinges on the birth of a child, isn’t it? A baby unable to do anything for himself, incapable of feeding himself, holding his own head up, who once would have laughed at peekaboo was the long awaited and prayed for Messiah.

We were all once those babies, useless, incapable and inherently wonderful babies. And even when we grow up, even when we’re grumpy teenagers like the boy in this advert, the inherently wonderful created nature of that baby still lives inside each of us.

Perhaps that is the very reason that the incarnation needed to happen the way it did. For the wonderful, created nature in each of us, for the inner child in each of us, to take notice the Messiah needed to be like us.

And sometimes we do miss it, we ignore the beauty of the baby boy in the manger because we’re too grown up, too busy, too weighed down with the weight of the world, and maybe just a bit too grumpy. But every Christmas is the chance for our inner child to notice again, the baby boy who is just like us, and is God with us.

Watch today’s advert…

We are officially in the season of Advent, the long wait, the big countdown to Christmas Day. And while it may feel long, very long to us- especially the littler of us for whom a day feels like 10 whole years. I think that first wait, that first countdown, first Advent from creation to the birth of a tiny baby in a stable was longer… for God.

We were merrily, blissfully unaware like the little boy’s parents, not knowing or expecting such a gift to be given in such a way. But God knew the gift, God knew the plan and understood how perfect this gift would be for God’s beloved creation. How very much we needed this gift. That wait, until the right time, until all the right people were in all the right places, until the stars (literally) aligned must have been endless.

I don’t know about you, but I can imagine God becoming as impatient as the little boy in the advert. Far from this little boy being as grumpy and spoilt as he might initially seem, there is a desperation in his behaviour. He is desperate to give the perfect gift, literally cannot wait.

The Old Testament is littered with pointers to the coming gift. God gave clue after clue as to what this gift would be, how it would be given, where it all would happen. The promised birth of the messiah was God’s worst kept secret.

Each Advent as we watch and wait for Christmas, there is a challenge for us to remember the God who counted down the long wait for the gift that God couldn’t wait to give…

I don’t really remember Christmas adverts being as big a business as they currently are when I was a kid. I do remember the Coca-Cola advert being that hallowed signal, that tipping point of “NOW it feels like Christmas.”  I also, must have done some singing along to the Toys R Us jingle every year. Perhaps I just never really paid attention to the “boring” adverts that weren’t for toys until I was that little bit more grown up.

For me 2008 sticks in my head. I was 18, Waitrose had a Christmas advert out that year that struck a chord in me- somewhere inexplicably deep inside me. “How?” I thought to myself, “How can you watch this and not connect to the true meaning of Christmas? The greatest story ever told?!”

And then it just kept happening. Every year. John Lewis, Waitrose, Sainsburys, McDonalds, even Amazon all connecting with profound truths and deep theology at the same time as simply trying to make as much money as possible. Sure sometimes the links were tenuous, and not all of these corporations have the shiniest business ethics, but these adverts snuck in to Christmas assemblies and talks I gave. Indeed, there was one year where I managed to write six years’ worth of John Lewis ads into one assembly- the year of the now legendary penguin costume.

This year, as the festive adverts roll on to our screens once again, connecting with the story which beats within all of us, I thought I’d put 13 years of ideas in one place.

So come with me, if you will, this Blogmas (every day of December) and think of me as the ghost of adverts past, as we consider the theology of Christmas adverts- the greatest story ever sold…