Christmas Billboard Rewrites A Well-known Carol To Highlight The Issues Of Homelessness In New Zealand

AUCKLAND, 18 December 2024 – St Luke’s church in Remuera, Auckland, revealed its 2024 Christmas billboard today; a cartoon that depicts the Holy Family of Joseph, Mary and the Baby Jesus in parallel to a Kiwi family, alongside words to a famous carol altered to bring focus to the issues of poverty and homelessness at Christmas.

The minister of St Luke’s, Rev Glynn Cardy, says in a society that still focuses primarily on the consumerism and the ‘glitz’ of Christmas, the image and rewritten lyrics to ‘Away in a Manger’ aim to encourage passers-by to think about what’s most important at this time – people.

“’Away in a Manger’ is a popular carol because it imagines the Nativity as a soft, serene, and sanitised scene, while the circumstances of Jesus’ birth would have been anything but,” says Cardy.

“The story of Christmas is dirty and rugged. Joseph and the heavily pregnant Mary are travelling on a donkey and essentially having to sleep rough as there is no room at the inn – and Mary has to give birth in a stable where animals were kept, and lays Jesus in their feed box.

“At a time when more New Zealanders – especially women – are facing homelessness and many families are vulnerable with the impacts of poverty, the shiny images of Christmas that are all around us stand in stark contrast to the genuine need that exists in our communities.”

Cardy says while only the first half of St Luke’s rewritten carol is shown on the billboard, leaving it open to viewers to consider for themselves what a more meaningful understanding of Christmas might be, the church’s full, re-imagined carol is as follows:

Visit the Community of St Luke online at http://stlukes.org.nz

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