Hay & Stardust offers a collection of worship and meditation resources for the season of Christmastide - including Christmas Day, Holy Innocents’ Day, Winter and New Year, Epiphany, Homelessness Sunday and Candlemas. It also contains eight Christmas plays; props include puppets, knuckle-dusters, big flashes, sticking plasters, sacks and stars! You have been warned.

Just like its companion volume Candles & Conifers, which covers the period from All Saints to Christmas Eve, the material in this book has been contributed by Iona Community members, associates, friends and others and reflects their diverse experiences of life.

When sleet blinds you,

hail drowns out voices,

and snow hides your path,

may you discern in each flake

a star, image of the one

that guided the Magi,

and find that in the pain

of birth, death or change

there is a light

to guide you.

• From “Winter Blessing’ by Mary Palmer