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Our community is crafting a beautiful subscription package offering daily emails to all who register, as a gift or for themselves as an investment in spiritual wellbeing, between Christmas and Epiphany.

The emails will be sent: 25 December – 5 January at 7.00am AST daily.

Submissions for content close: Sunday 30th November 2025

Registration/Subscription: 20th December Midnight AEST

This year's theme: The Nativity as Narrated by the Innkeeper’s Cat 

Step into the quiet wonder of the first Christmas night through the eyes of the innkeeper’s cat — a silent witness to the holy and the ordinary mingling in straw and shadow. In this poetic retelling of the story of the nativity, creation itself seems to hold its breath as heaven stoops low, and the forgotten observer at the stable’s edge feels eternity purr in the heart of the world.  

As different voices reflect, the story unfolds with tenderness and awe — where beasts bow, light glows through hay, and the divine becomes touchable. It is a tale of quiet revelation, where even silence hums with glory. 

This year HHO 12-days of Christmastide is the nativity as narrated by the Innkeeper’s Cat. Each day will hear a different voice from the nativity.  

You are invited to send in your contributions about the first Christmas. Here are some ideas if you are stuck, for example: 

  • Personal reflections 
  • Poems 
  • Recipes 
  • Jokes 
  • Stories overheard on the way to the inn 
  • Images done on Padlet 
  • Pieces of art 
  • Music 
  • The weather forecast for the day 
  • Book recommendations and why  
  • Memories of your first nativity or any nativity 
  • Favourite characters 
  • If you were present at the first Christmas, what would you see and/or say… 
  • Or anything else not suggested here 

 

12 Days of Christmastide

Day 1 Innkeeper’s cat 

Day 2 The Prophets 

Day 3 The Archangel Gabriel 

Day 4 Mary 

Day 5 Joseph 

Day 6 Donkey and Ox 

Day 7 Stars and Guiding Star 

Day 8 Magi and Camels 

Day 9 Angels and Shepherds 

Day 10 Herod and Manger 

Day 11 Jesus and Innkeeper’s Cat 

Day 12 God 

 

What is this all about?

We hope to offer this to people who are alone, or who struggle during this season, as a source of comfort and inspiration to draw nearer to God in creation.

It also represents a gift to our Holy Hermits Online members and family as an extension of our devotional practice.

We hope folk will gift this subscription to others for Christmas (for people who are at a distance, those they don’t know what else to gift, or for those they wish to share faith/invitation to HHO with in a special way).

This also has the potential to be a beautiful gift to the wider church community and create more opportunity for us to connect with our Ministry Partners.  

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Ministries
Christmastide Subscriptions