The Journey of the Magi: reinventing Christmas

Sue's recent post has surfaced some thinking I've been doing about celebrating Christmas. I'm taking on board thoughts about re-inculturating Christian celebration of Advent, Nativity and Epiphany. I would propose that we now call that whole period 'Christmas' and 'Yule', using the word Nativity for the period 24 Dec to 5 Jan.

So where am I up to and what's it got to do with the journey of the Magi?
I'm proposing, I think, that just after All Saints'/All Souls-tide we should start preparation for Nativity, an informal Advent that is something like the forty day preparation for Easter, like it used to be and still is in the Orthodox east.

I'm considering having a seven-branched candlestick which we'd light the first candle of on the Sunday following All Saints' Sunday and the final one would be lit, then, on the Sunday preceeding the feast of the Nativity. I'd suggest we use the liturgical colour blue, shade into purple at the start of December and perhaps a couple of weeks before Nativity begin to use other colours and start to use Christmas carols in worship.

The Magi could be a way to mark this approach. On that second sunday in November they would begin their symbolic journey, Posada style, passing through various places, accumulating traditions as they go through to Epiphany when they would arrive at the crib. Around Nativity we'd have them arrive in Canaan and face Herod, the feast of the Innocents would gain a bit more prominence (as perhaps it should) ...
I'm still thinking about how to theme the Magi's stations, but I'm taken with the idea of them somehow linking things in the 'secular' realm and in the other religions' spheres into Christological perspective. Thus drawing positively on the way that their story sees their occupation and spirituality both, presumably, as astronomers and astrologers (in our terms) fulfilled by the Christ event. An inspiration for theological reflection on the secular, much needed I think.

What do you think ... I'm starting to flag this up now because it would take some planning and I'd like to invite others to consider and add ideas or contrarisms.
Over to you. If you like the idea please blog it or send it on to others.
Sue Wallace: The Magi's Journey