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A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with the Revd Dr Stephen Wigley.

Good morning. For some of us, getting ready for Christmas also means getting ready for a serious bout of Christmas music. We’re just about to enter the busiest week of the year for Christmas carolling, with services and concerts for everyone from Mum & Toddlers groups to local schools and brass bands. Concert halls and theatres have their own Christmas programmes too, with for us in Wales the Â鶹ԼÅÄ National Orchestra of Wales putting on a range of Christmas shows and music.

At the other end of the musical scale, there’s another very different musical endeavour underway at this time and that’s the annual release of singles hoping to become a Christmas ‘no.1’. The older among us may recall classics from long ago recorded by artists like Harry Belafonte and Bing Crosby. But in recent years the charts have been dominated by LadBaby and songs about ‘sausage rolls’. It has been very successful in raising money for food bank charities – and it’s a sad reflection that they are still needed more than ever. Nor is the charity theme is being lost this year, as there’s another remake of ‘Do they know it’s Xmas?’ being released with the money raised to be shared with Band Aid. And perhaps that does matter almost as much as the quality of the record. After all, we don’t know what music the heavenly choirs sang on that first nativity, but we do know it contained a message of peace and joy shared by God with all people of goodwill. And I hope that message remains the one we hear during this next fortnight, whatever the volume or quality of the music.

Creator God,
The coming of your Son prompts a song of joy and peace which runs through the heart of your creation; help us as we hear it to share in that message of peace and goodwill which the shepherds first heard.
Amen.