Hallo again to all.

It is the first Sunday after Christmas, New Year's Eve, the last day of the secular year, and the twenty-fourth anniversary of Anglicans Online. Like many of you, we're reflecting on another tumultuous year, enjoying the Christmas season, and are delighted that AO is beginning its twenty-fifth year.

This year reads like many others before it—unseasonable weather, unruly political leaders, isolation, natural disasters, strife in the Anglican Communion and confusion over the meaning thereof, and calls decrying the over-commercialisation of Christmas and general shortening of the feast to one day. Twenty-Seventeen—and the year or two prior, have seemed rather 'extra'—to use a newfangled definition of an eighteenth century word*.

Extra: over-the-top, excessive, dramatic behaviour, says Urban Dictionary.

Perhaps a better explanation comes from PopSugar's '11 Slang Terms to Memorize If You Want to Stay Cool' from 25 December of this year:

If someone calls you extra, you're either trying too hard or being over the top. Think Regina George's mom. However, anyone from a teacher who gives too much homework to that loud, drunk birthday girl stumbling around in a plastic tiara can be described as extra.

This year has been for us, a bit extra. The highs have been amplified, as have the lows. The deaths of the famous, the infamous, the friends and the family. The extravagant claims and behaviours of politicians the world over, an unexpectedly warm season for most, with frigid colds in the Northern Hemisphere. The ordination of priests into some sort of parallel Anglicanism in what has been in the See of Canterbury by bishops from the Global South calling itself the Anglican Mission in England (AMiE)—more amplified and confused than even the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA) founded seventeen years ago.

Last Sunday we celebrated the birth of the Word Made Flesh. Today the Holy Name, and next weekend, the arrival of the Magi bringing gifts to the Newborn King. Epiphany soon will bookend the Christmas season, as every church going Anglican knows, bringing to a close the large flower displays, pine, large creches, and lavish music that adorned our church buildings. The Advent Wreath with its Christ Candle in the centre will be removed. It is the end of our time of being so extra.

Or is it? Over the top? Perhaps at times. Excessive, rarely. Trying too hard, never. When for the glory of God and in worship of Him, we find it never to be 'extra' but enough—or nearly enough. It is not helpful to overreach in these preparations, lest the feast become a stress or performance rather than a worship and welcome, leaving an opportunity for Christmas to be 'oh so extra' as the secular Christmas holiday has doubtless become—a never ending race to purchase gifts and hang decorations, cook a feast, bake dozens of biscuits, entertain, all while avoiding excess added to the waist, leaving some relieved and others depressed when the holiday is over. We know it is not over. And instead of being 'extra' it is real.

Do have a look at our collection of Epiphany resources, perhaps some of the traditions there will speak to you. Perhaps in your part of the Anglican world, the Feast of the Epiphany/Feast of the Three Kings is more important than it is in ours, in which case you can help us learn how it is done. How this time is preserved. Tell us what you think.

Joyful wishes for 2018, with hopes for an extra wonderful year (in the traditional sense).

See you next week.

All of us at Anglicans Online