I have a friend who goes into paroxysms whenever he hears that Christmas classic, ‘The Little Drummer Boy’. I feel some sympathy for him, but could not resist forwarding to him the latest iteration called ‘The Little Drummer Girl’, presumably a story that follows the same theme of a child playing their drum for the infant Jesus. I think that only made his pa-pa-paroxysms worse.

Admittedly there’s no evidence either inside or outside the Bible for the appearance of a boy in European military kit in Bethlehem during the first century. Might it have been one of the angels? No, they play harps. A shepherd then? No, they play those rustic lyres and wood flutes. Joseph perhaps? No, he was a carpenter not a musician. The wise men? No, their hands were full of gifts not drumsticks. Mary? I think she may have been occupied. Besides, not sure she would have been thrilled to have someone banging on drums while trying to breastfeed.

But unlike my friend, I do carry some secret sympathies for the story. The boy played his heart out for the newborn king. And ought not I to do the same, with my heart? The boy played to honour him. And ought not I to make that my aim too? If only that sequence would happen again and again with my praying and preaching and writing and singing and husbanding and parenting and living and dying. “Then he smiled at me.” And that would be pa-pa-paradise!