Tonight was the only time this year that we get to use one of the more luxurious brick built huts. These have electricity and running water and are slightly more spacious than the simple wooden hut constructions that make up the vast majority of the beach huts along Hove seafront.
The facilities available allowed the Kidz Klub to go all out on the installation of technology and not only had Christmas lights but lasers as part of the installation.
These lit up a pile of enormous gifts which surrounded and almost dwarfed the baby Jesus lying centre stage.
Ironically all these beautifully wrapped gift boxes were empty as a symbol of the emptiness of a purely commercial view of Christmas.
The true gift at Christmas is that of God himself in the form of the baby Jesus, a gift that transcends the glitter and glitz that makes up so much of this season of the year.
As if to emphasise this crass commercialisation of Christmas, a giant blow up/light up Santa lurked just around the corner from the hut, reminding us of the usual imagery associated with Christmas which so many seek to escape when they come to the Beach Hut Advent Calendar.
We were also blessed this evening by a choir of folk who had offered to come along and sing Christmas carols for the event. They sang beautifully, as you would expect of a group who were used to singing in a church on a regular basis and really helped to add to the occasion.
In the midst of it all lay baby Jesus, serene and peaceful, untroubled by the gaudy, flashing lights and the false jollity of the blow up Santa, reminding us to think about the truth behind gift giving at this season of the year.
In this final week of advent beach huts we head to number 189 for our next installation.
