The Parish Magazine December 2024

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20 The Parish Magazine — December 2024 feature — 3 TV licence rules updated . . . David Pickup, a solicitor, explains what is legal for you to watch on TV Imagine something unlikely! There is one television programme the whole family enjoy, but everyone watches it differently. So, you are resting upstairs and watching it on the portable set in the bedroom. Your partner is still at work and watching it on a laptop in the office. Your son is at university and watching it on his computer live. Your daughter who lives with you is on the train coming home from a short holiday loaded with dirty clothes and using her mobile phone to see the programme. Your neighbour does not have a television and listens to highlights on the radio. A happy typical family scene! You are covered if you have a television licence as it includes the whole house. If you have let out a part of your house on a separate tenancy, the tenant needs a separate licence. Your student son must have his own TV licence if he watches or records programmes as they are being shown on TV or live on an online TV service, download or watch BBC programmes on iPlayer. If he shares a house, then one licence is sufficient for the house. Your partner needs a separate TV Licence for the office if he watches live on an office phone, tablet or computer. Staff or customers do not need a licence if they watch live TV at the business address using their own Mladen Zivkovic, dreamstime.com device, if it is not plugged into the mains, and there is a TV Licence at their home address. Your daughter is covered by your home licence. The neighbour does not need a licence to listen to the radio. The law changed at the beginning of September. You must have a TV Licence to download or watch BBC programmes on iPlayer – live, catch up or on demand. If you already have a TV Licence, you are already covered. As always this is a guide and if in doubt get advice. The TV Licensing website has some very clear and helpful advice and a set of FAQs. http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/ And here's another of David Pickup's Christmas thoughts . . . What's in your Christmas pudding this year? There is a tradition, which dates from the Middle Ages, of putting silver coins into Christmas puddings. The first coins used were a silver farthing or penny. After World War One, it became a threepenny bit and then a sixpence. Finding one was supposed to bring you good fortune, but probably it was more likely to break a tooth as you bit into the pudding. We now pay for most things with plastic or by tapping a mobile telephone. In future, will people put old credit cards or phones in their Christmas pudding? I hope not. Other coins ‘appear’ at this time of year. Chocolate coins are traditionally given to children at Christmas time, and in Jewish tradition during Hanukkah. It is said that one night Saint Nicholas climbed on a roof and threw a purse of money down a chimney. It landed in a pair of stockings that a little girl had hung up to dry. Good throw! What type of card person are you? The time to send and receive Christmas cards has come round again. It's also time for our annual shock at the cost of a coloured card, and disbelief at what the Post Office intends to charge us to deliver them! It seems there are three kinds of people when it comes to Christmas cards: the total abstainers, the total givers and the selective givers. Abstainers write ‘Happy Christmas everyone’ on Facebook, and consider the job well done. Total givers spend a fortune on cards and stamps and send them to everyone they know. Selective givers try to cut corners, but then cannot remember who sent who what, and as the cards pour through their door, spend time worrying. However you do it, it is good to stay in yearly touch with your widest circle of friends and family. Proverbs points out that: ‘Like cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.’ Proverbs 25:25. Your loved ones will enjoy hearing from you! How much will you spend this Christmas? You will probably spend about £600 during this festive period — what with Christmas gifts, food, decorations, socialising and travel. Over half your budget will go on gifts for others, followed by food and drink (18%), travel (6%), gifts for yourself (4%) and decorations (2%). About a third of us will still be shopping during December, though about 43% of us will have finished our shopping before Black Friday. We tend to spend most on our children, then on our partners, and least on our mothers-in-law. 56% of those aged 18-24 and 25-34 hope to receive a practical or essential gift this Christmas, rather than a luxury item. These figures come from the The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising's annual Christmas survey. 135 DECEMBER 2O24.indd 20 13/11/2024 10:15:21
feature — 4 At the beginning of the 7th Century this part of the country was in the Kingdom of Wessex and its inhabitants lived as pagans, that was until about 635 when a Christian priest called Birinus crossed the Channel with the intention of travelling on to the Midlands where no Christian preachers had ever set foot. But his journey was substantially delayed in South East England, where he found among the Saxon inhabitants that paganism was rife. He decided to delay his journey and make an unplanned stop there. Little is known of Birinus's early life other than he was a 7th century Italian monk who was consecrated bishop in Milan by Archbishop Asterius. It seems that Birinus was a man who felt compelled to proclaim the good news of God, but for him he felt this in a particular way by making his mark on history. We are told that in 634, this led Pope Honorius to choose Birinus to 'sow the seeds of their Holy Faith in the distant lands beyond the Kingdom of the English, where no other had been before him'. Birinus set about preaching to whomever he encountered and he gradually became known, as did his message of Christ the Saviour. A major breakthough was made when the King of Wessex, Cynegils, asked Birinus for instruction in the Christian faith. His daughter was about to marry Oswald, the Christian king of Northumbria, and for political reasons Cynegils now also wanted to convert. So Birinus taught and baptised Cynegils and his family, and in return they gave him the Romano-British town of Dorchester as his see, and Birinus became the first Bishop of Dorchester. From his new ‘headquarters’, Birinus spent his last 15 years starting several churches around Wessex.. Towards the end of his life Birinus dedicated a church at Winchester, which later became the ecclesiastical centre of the kingdom. There is no record of Wessex bishops at Dorchester after 660. One of the many churches inspired by Birinus is thought to be St Andrew's Sonning. Later he made St Andrew's Sonning one of the twin Cathedrals for the Bishop of his diocese, the other being Ramsbury, near Hungerford. It retained this status for about 150 years until, after several further diocesan reorganisations, Sonning became part of Salisbury Diocese, when it was founded in 1220. After another 616 years in 1836 the parish of St Andrew's Sonning, along with the rest of Berkshire, was transferred to the Oxford Diocese where it has remained ever since. One of St Andrew's Sonning legacies of being a cathedral was the 12th Century palace for visiting bishops, believed to be in the area where The Bull Hotel now stands. The Parish Magazine — December 2024 21 Birinus, a Sonning Lord of the Manor CHURCH BUILDER CATHEDRAL Stained glass window of Birinus at Dorchester Abbey StephenPaternoster, wikimedia commons A bronze plaque inside St Andrew's lists 11 bishops of Sonning who remained 'Lords of the Manor' until 1574 when it was surrendered to Queen Elizabeth I. SUPREME HEAD When St Andrew's Church was dedicated it included the glazing of the windows. Between 1260 and 1620 several extensions were built and during the latter part of that period, known as the Reformation, Henry VIII took the church, previously under the jurisdiction of the popes, away from Rome when he created the Church of England, with him as its Supreme Head. It was then that the worship was changed from Roman Catholic to Protestant. Perhaps Birinus’ major achievement was that he demonstrated that the 'obedience and faith' of the Christianity that he planted in South East England became a key part of the Britain that we have inherited today and, in doing so, he helped to shape British history for centuries to come. Birinus died in about 650, was buried in Dorchester Abbey where the stained glass window in his memory, (above) can be seen. Shortly after his death he was canonised. His feast day is 3 December in the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox Church, although some churches also celebrate his feast on 5 December. 135 DECEMBER 2O24.indd 21 13/11/2024 10:15:21
Page 1 and 2: The Parish Magazine Magazine Parish
Page 3 and 4: Serving the communities of Charvil,
Page 5 and 6: The Parish Magazine — December 20
Page 7 and 8: the parish noticeboard — 1 Advent
Page 9 and 10: Lights shining in the dark! Corinne
Page 11 and 12: the parish noticeboard — 4 SHARIN
Page 13 and 14: parish noticeboard — 5 Father who
Page 15 and 16: parish noticeboard — 6 Nothing is
Page 17 and 18: feature — 1 Three Christmas quest
Page 19: feature — 2 Christmas pudding and
Page 23 and 24: CHILDREN'S is welcome to we celebra
Page 25 and 26: around the villages — 1 arounD th
Page 27 and 28: around the villages — 1 around th
Page 29 and 30: HOME AND Garden — 2 Robin facts a
Page 31 and 32: THE SCIENCES The Parish Magazine
Page 33 and 34: CHRISTMAS christmas quiz David Pick
Page 35 and 36: THE ARTS — 1 Rev Michael Burgess
Page 37 and 38: THE ARTS — 2 Book Reviews — 2 D
Page 39 and 40: PUZZLE PAGE — 2 CROSSWORD 1 2 3 4
Page 41 and 42: CHILDREN'S PAGE The Parish Magazine
Page 43 and 44: Please mention The Parish Magazine

The Parish Magazine December 2024

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