Drayton Parslow's Christmas Message

And so, as Christmas so often does, it causes me to look back over the year. And an interesting one it has been.

After the unexpected disappearance of Eileen and the Hnaefs, I spent a while trying to persuade the Beaker People that remained to give up their neo-pagan, pseudo-Christian ways and forswear tea lights, tear down the idols in the Moot Hall and join me in embracing the Protestant faith.
What a failure. Indeed I failed as did Orwulf the Baptist when he challenged the Amersham Anglicans to a "who has the biggest miracles" competition in 1687. His prayers totally failed to cause porridge to fall from the sky, and only a rapid disappearance in the direction of the Chalfonts, where they believe in that kind of thing, saved him from a watery martyrdom.

But setting my face like flint, I made the journey to Frisby-on-Soar where I became Baptist pastor. Truly the happiest days of my life. The successful "Baptibus" campaign, where we scoured the highways and byways of Leicestershire in search of the fallen to bring into the Kingdom (I know the original Biblical image is of a feast, but I shy away from the image, containing as it does the implication that God may like fun).
And then happiest of all when Marjorie returned to me.

But truly, what God gives he takes away. And after a mistake over the zoology of 8th Century BC Judah, I found myself on my way. The Frisby Baptists brook no dissent. Or, to be more accurate, they're quite fond of dissent. It's heresy and heretics they despise. But Eileen, to give her her due, has been very kind and let me rent a room and the Chapel at very reasonable rates. With my new congregation of funambulist fundamentalist Baptists, I've a new mission and new hope.

And today, of all days.  I have a new gift to celebrate. Marjorie's term as pastor of Frisby Independent Baptists has come to an end. Apparently in her Christmas sermon this morning she suggested that avarice and gluttony are just as sinful as sexual sins - even as much as sexual sins that other people know about. And lacking any biblical evidence to prove her wrong, instead they latched onto the fact that no woman should speak or teach in church. They seem to have overlooked her gender just as long as she was not upsetting her.

So Marjorie is back, it is Christmas Day. I believe I may open a low-calorie bottle of non-alcoholic Irn Bru to celebrate. A happy Christmas to you all. Even the Frisby Baptists.