Tonight we began our journey to Christmas in earnest by focussing on Joseph. Tradition has it that Joseph was quite an old man when the events of the first Christmas took place and it must have been quite an inconvenience for him to have to leave his work and home to go to Bethelehem for the census.At hut 268 we got some sense of that as we saw his workshop abandoned while he went for lunch but still showing us something of the things that he might have been interested in.
A beautiful, clean wooden star carved out of a single block of wood, tools all neatly arranged on shelves, angels watching over the work with a backdrop of stars and a little basket full of offcuts of wood with the words love, light and peace carved into them.There was a sense of peace and calm about the hut tonight, helped by the better weather and a cold and crisp night. A feeling that Joseph could take anything in his stride and in a workmanlike, measured way would be able to work out what to do with a mysteriously pregnant fiance a journey to Bethlehem without quite knowing what was going to happen at the end.
Tomorrow we'll be looking at Mary getting ready at hut 357a.
