{"id":34764,"date":"2025-12-24T23:47:21","date_gmt":"2025-12-24T23:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=34764"},"modified":"2025-12-24T23:47:21","modified_gmt":"2025-12-24T23:47:21","slug":"merry-christmas-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/?p=34764","title":{"rendered":"Merry Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/imag25\/2025122401.jpg\" \/><br \/>\nThere is a Nativity tableau outside St Edmund\u2019s Church in Abingdon. Lit up at night and visible during the day, it shows a traditional scene in a wooden stable: Mary and Joseph with the baby Jesus in a manger, watched over by an angel, with shepherds, the three wise men, and animals, with a painted night sky and an enormous star.<\/p>\n<p>The scene marks the birth Christians celebrate on 25 December, a date close to midwinter, in the Northern Hemisphere, when days are shortest and darkness strongest. Before Christianity, this time of year was already associated with looking for a turning point, the slow return of the light.<\/p>\n<p>Around it sit other Christmas traditions: Father Christmas and presents, family gatherings, shared meals. Christian belief, older seasonal customs, commercial Christmas, and family life all come together at much the same time.<\/p>\n<p>Merry Christmas, however you celebrate it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There is a Nativity tableau outside St Edmund\u2019s Church in Abingdon. Lit up at night and visible during the day, it shows a traditional scene in a wooden stable: Mary and Joseph with the baby Jesus in a manger, watched over by an angel, with shepherds, the three wise men, and animals, with a painted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christmas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.abingdonblog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}