Christians prepare for the celebration of Christmas during the season of Advent. In an increasingly secular Australia, the faithless prepare to celebrate the arrival of Australia’s holiday season with traditional meals punctuated by totemic sporting events, beginning with the double of Boxing Day; the cricket in Melbourne and the start of the Sydney-Hobart Yacht Race in Australia’s most photographed area of water, fringed as it is by fragrant frangipanis.
The 2024-2025 summer season will end on the contentious Australian date of 26th January. For so long the date has been Australia Day to commemorate the landing of the British First Fleet on that day in 1788. For a long time now the date evokes debate and controversy as many see celebrations on that day as inappropriate given the effects of British colonisation on Australia’s indigenous population.
The day now has many titles including Dispossession Day and Invasion Day. Contention reigns. Some companies allow their employees to come to work on the public holiday if they are not comfortable with celebrating the traditional national day.
Well, one thing is certain. The Australian Open will finish on the 26th of January with the evening Men’s Final.
Christians in France have extra reason to celebrate Advent with the reopening of the nation’s iconic Notre Dame Cathedral. World leaders recently gathered to see the phoenix like renewal of one of the world’s most famous buildings. For those who were familiar with its darkened walls, the bleached nature of its interior walls would have come as a major surprise. The intensity of the inferno that nearly destroyed the building, peeled away centuries of grime to reveal pristine walls.
Syria, a nation of mainly non-Christians, will celebrate the advent of life without the Assad regime. Naturally, Putin’s Russia has offered asylum to the disgraced dictator. His reign of terror, especially since the Arab Spring and Syria’s civil war, led to the world’s greatest humanitarian crises as millions of refugees fled the country. Whether they are now able to safely return to their homeland and what system of government will replace the tyranny remain fundamental and unanswered questions.
Shockingly, Australia has seen an advent of targeted antisemitic terror attacks: burning of cars in Sydney’s Jewish suburbs and the firebombing of a synagogue in Melbourne. Instantly, the impression of Australia as an essentially safe and respectful society has evaporated.
The attacks have destroyed the Australian Prime Minister’s attempts to walk an impossible political highwire. He has sought to display upset and outrage with antisemitism, but not so outraged that he offended blocs of Palestinian voters in key marginal seats. Mr. Albanese’s attempt to make Labor Party seats secure is now an albatross around his neck as he is accused of weak leadership.
The contributions of his Foreign Minister do not help his cause of being wholly committed to combating antisemitism. Penny Wong’s assertion that the Israeli Prime Minister must obey international law in the same way as the leaders of Russia and China is a breathtaking invitation to practise moral relativism.
The world’s tennis players are now resting, pending the start of the Australian summer season. Whilst we wait, Australians are celebrating the advent of a new sporting star on the athletics track. 56 years ago, in the rarefied air of the Mexico Olympics, Australia’s Peter Norman won the silver medal in the 200 metres.
His blistering time of 20.06 seconds quickly became of secondary importance after he was banned for supporting the black power protest of the gold and bronze medal winners from America at the medal presentation ceremony.
A Sudanese schoolboy refugee with the name of Gout Gout, which already sounds like a bankable trademark, has set a new Australian record of 20.04 at a recent Australian Schoolboys’ Athletics Championships. How delighted Norman would have been to see a black athlete from a disadvantaged background usurp his throne. Now the inevitable comparisons with Olympian sprinting legend Usain Bolt are being made. Australians have a proud history of adopting foreign sporting idols. Think of the champion racehorse, Phar Lap! Bred and born in New Zealand, the Depression era equine hero is known as ‘Australia’s’ most famous horse!
So, what can we, in the spirit of advent and celebrating what is to come, anticipate for the world in 2025?
Sadly, what is ahead of us does not compare with the profundity of God’s gift to us at all in Christmas.
There are no surprises as the background scripts have been written this year.
The inauguration of Donald Trump for his second term as President in January is likely to define the political and economic trajectory of much of the world. Trump has promised that the tempo of his first hundred days in office will be aggressive, if not cyclonic: closing the border between the USA and Mexico whilst at the same time repatriating illegal immigrants in the USA; the imposition of tariffs on imported goods from many countries, including Australia; intervening more directly in conflicts in the Middle East, Lebanon, Ukraine and Iran; and letting members of his hand-picked but dubiously qualified Executive, take control of highly important Government Departments.
From Australia’s perspectives, will Trump want to revisit the terms of the AUKUS agreement? Will a bellicose Trump heighten international tensions with China?
Australia must have a Federal election by the end of May, 2025. Will it see the advent of another minority government? Will Anthony Albanese fulfil his dream of becoming the first Prime Minister to be re-elected after serving a full term in office? Or will he become the first Prime Minister to lose an election after one term of his party in office since James Scullin in 1931?
As much as the incumbent might wish the election to be a contest between personalities, with his hope being that Peter Dutton will be seen as too divisive for the Australian body politic, it will be fought on ‘bread and butter’ issues and the cost of those items amongst Australians ‘lucky’ enough to attempting to buy their own home in the suburbs. In the 1920s , Prime Minister, Stanley Melbourne Bruce, successfully campaigned on the theme of “Men, Money and Markets.” A century later, the election which will mark a hundred years of compulsory voting in Australia, will be fought on “Mortgages and Managing the Bills, especially the electricity accounts.”
God’s promise at Advent is that a life based in Christ will see an individual place their faith in “the best of hands”. Here on earth, one wonders whether that is the case?
Christmas blessings! As always, we hope that renewal and revival will lead to the “best of times,” eclipsing the worst. The reopening of Notre Dame on the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbour was a reminder, despite the awkward handshakes, that humans can and should aim to be on the better side of the angels.
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