Last Thoughts: the tales that survive

I was just dropping the cartoon below onto another page in this issue, chuckling to myself, when I realised something:

Most people in their late teens or below don’t know what an iPod is. There hasn't been a new model in over half a decade — the line was killed by the iPhone & apps.

I bought one of the very original iPods, back in 2002, and was roundly mocked by Lorna — then just my girlfriend — for looking like I had medical equipment hooked up to me: the now iconic white headphones were weird and unsettling originally. Now? What was an innovation 23 years ago is obsolete. I take my old iPods to work, on occasions, to illustrate to unbelieving undergraduates that they’re the reason podcasts are called what they are. (You were broadcasting to an iPod, hence the name.)

Crib continuity

Things come and things go, but one of the delights of the crib service is that it’s a thread of continuity through time. As my girls rehearse, I can think of my own school and church nativities as a child in Scotland, and back through time to my parent’s upbringing post-war in London.

It’s fair to say that the Church of England is going through a rough patch at the moment. But that thread of continuity, of love and of hope that the crib service represents reminds us that some stories, some messages, are bigger than the latest tech innovation, or the political narrative of the day. 

Children may not know about the iPod, but they know about baby Jesus in his manger.