Arrived home just in time for the Liverpool Nativity at 8pm last night on BBC3, (if you missed it it is on again next sunday on BBC1) Easter 2006 saw the Manchester Passion denounced as blasphemous, yet probably did more than any other easter story-telling to interest people in that story. So was the Liverpool Nativity the same? Well, no, although I didn’t think the Manchester Passion was blasphemous, so who am I to judge. It seems, (from a quick glance at papers) that the nativity of our Lord once again was one of humility and desperate poverty, marked only by the devastating honesty of the performance and singing crowds. It will be marked as one of the great moments of biblical story telling i’m sure, but no denouncing crowds, except for the usual suspects we come to expect from the secularists. Is the nativity one of those stories so deeply woven into our being that it marks us? Any re-telling of it leaving us nodding in agreement then getting on with life?
No doubt about it though, it was good, real and honestly portrayed, with quite a political edge which may, if it sinks in, rock the boats of those in power. One baby, one life and a whole new world!
