New Year Resolutions are a good idea not least because in making a resolution I am recognising my need of improvement. I am reasonable at that in general, less so in particular. Resolving to do better in the areas of patience, kindness and not envying, along with loosing weight and not interrupting all seem a bit too much to take on just now.

Last week I was caught out be myself and discovered an area that needs immediate resolve. It is in the matter of letting go of long held prejudices.

During years of travelling and being able to stay in hotels of all sorts in various parts of the world I have become aware of the custom of people claiming sun loungers. I have heard of, but not actually witnessed, people coming to the the swimming pool at three in the morning to put an item of clothing, a bag or a book on a sun lounger to claim a preferred space.

I believed, along with many others, that most of the perpetrators were German.

As I went for my early morning swim in the Garden Pool at the wonderful Centara Resort at Hua Hin I noticed a number of sun loungers already claimed, many by books, holiday reading no doubt.

I looked at the first book. It was in German as I suspected, as was the second. Prejudice confirmed. There were five other sun loungers claimed by books. All were in English. Prejudice challenged!

When I mentioned this to the German manager later, my prejudice admitted, he laughed with me at the tendency to hold onto prejudices.

We did agree, though, that the books in English might all be being read by Germans brushing up on their second language. Prejudices held are not easily dispelled.

The Philippine choir at St Theresa’s Roman Catholic Church in Hua Hin Thailand was on enthusiastic form for the English language mass on Christmas Day. The parish priest less so. The sermon was thirty five minutes long and he seemed rather angry with us, the congregation.

In the minibus on the way back to the hotel after mass I said to the family that all I wanted them to remember was that God chose to become human as a baby because no one is frightened of a baby.

“No Grandpa.” Fred commented. “When Emily [his younger sister] was a baby she screamed and I was so frightened I ran out of the room!”

Perhaps the carol ‘Away in a Manger’ is correct, ‘The little lord Jesus no crying he makes.’   

Anyone visiting Dubai, and I imagine those living there, know that Christmas is coming. There are Christmas decorations and decorated Christmas trees filling the hotels and shopping malls. In the lobby of the hotel where I was staying in Dubai there was a Christmas tree and Santa’s Grotto but when I walked passed it Santa was not at home.

A recording of Christmas Carols was being played as I entered the aeroplane on my flight from Dubai to Bangkok. Here in Bangkok the Christmas tree in the lobby of the Oriental Hotel is huge and beautifully decorated. In the small hotel where I am staying the staff in the restaurant the evening I arrived were wearing red white and green knitted hats with reindeer antlers coming out of them.

The carols are of the ‘I wish you a Merry Christmas’ and ‘I’m dreaming of a White Christmas’ variety and though I didn’t hear his praises being sung I am sure Rudolph the Red nose Reindeer was somewhere around in both countries.

Some find this ‘commercialisation’ or ‘secularisation’ of Christmas distressing. I do not. There is an atmosphere of joy and celebration in the air. Here the words ‘Happy Christmas’ are not avoided. Throughout all this some one may ask, ‘What is Christmas?’ And they may seek and find the answer. On top of each of those Christmas trees there is a star and someone may ask, ‘Why?’

My walks through Kennington Park have shown me that dogs are excellent conversation starters. It is made easy because the dogs are inclined, usually in affectionate terms, to engage with each other. Even when the encounter is not positive it enables the owners involved to begin a conversation and opens up a whole realm of human enrichment.

The same seems to apply to those with prams. Although the child in the pram does not engage they facilitate communication between the adults pushing the pram or buggy.

When I recently started using a walking stick I discovered that sticks offer the same possibilities. Making my slow journey through Kennings Way recently a stranger commented on the sturdy nature of my walking stick to which I was able to respond by admiring hers which was very elegant.

‘But of course it is,’ she said, ‘Because I am a lady!’  And she laughed.

We then went on to discuss mobility issues, the weather, and the merits and demerits of Southwark Council. A pleasant encounter from which we both benefitted – I most certainly did.

Conversation starters and conversation stoppers are hugely important. How sad it is when individuals, families, societies or nations stop speaking to one another. They are  left diminished and deprived.

When I compare myself with some of my family and friends I can see myself as poor. When I compare myself with friends, some here in London but certainly some in India and Thailand, I am very rich indeed. Comparisons can be very tricky and context is very important. Poverty in the United Kingdom or New Zealand can look quite different to that in India or Africa.

C S Lewis said that pride was the greatest sin of all. The opposite virtue is humility. During the Second World War, Lewis was invited by the BBC to broadcast a series of talks. The talks became the book Mere Christianity. He devoted a whole talk to ‘The Great Sin.’ Pride, he said, leads to every other vice and that is because it is basically comparative and competitive.

‘Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.’

It is the superior, ‘I’m not as bad as…’ and, ‘At least I am more generous than…’ or more polite, or kind or anything at all, wherein lies the problem. 

C S Lewis, ‘It is the comparison that makes you proud.’

When I was chaplain to my old school in Christchurch New Zealand we had School Assembly in the Hall on Thursday mornings. The whole school assembled. The Headmaster lead half the staff, gowned, down one aisle to the stage. The chaplain, cassocked, lead the other half. On the stage the chaplain and the headmaster faced each other, acknowledged each other with a head bow and turned to face the school. The chaplain said, ‘Sit,’ which everyone did, and then gave a brief ‘Thought for the day.’

One Thursday I spoke about the sin of pride when it is comparative and I quoted C S Lewis. Then I sat and the Headmaster stood to give his address to the school. He said,

‘The chaplain has spoken about the wrong sort of pride. I will speak to you about the right sort. There’s litter around the quad! And around upper! Anyone would think we were some local high school! Take some pride in the place!’

As we were processing out I heard the voice of a senior colleague behind me,

‘Chaplain, I think the headmaster missed your point!’