Article December 24, 2012 Issue

South Pacific Christmas

Norman C. Hutchinson

Credit: Norman C. Hutchinson

One might be tempted to accept the twilight hours as a metaphor connected with the approach of darkness, the close of a joyous experience, or even the end of life itself. This doesn’t have to be the case. 

We don’t need to see good as ever “winding down” into darkness. In the Bible we read, “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (I John 1:5). That we can experience, at least to a degree, some of this glorious light of God became clear to me a few years ago.

Two weeks before Christmas 2010, three of us prepared to land at our second home on tiny Norfolk Island. Located in the South Pacific—roughly equidistant from New Caledonia, New Zealand, and mainland Australia—the Australian territory’s industrious, fiercely independent, but peaceful, population of around 1,500 has a strong Christian tradition, and was that evening preparing for its annual Christmas pageant.