Yes, It Went All Right, Thank You

Venturing back into blogging after a bit of a gap, but not being too hard on myself, I thought I would write a very very little about Christmas. It was fine, thank you very much, as people are just about ceasing to ask me, it being the latter stages of January now. All the celebrations were a bit concertina-ed this year, as the last Sunday before Christmas - traditionally the day for a lot of churches' Carol Services - was the day before Christmas Eve so everything was crammed into a couple of days. Everything was pretty much the same as in previous years, as you have to summon up quite some reserves of energy to do anything ground-breaking over Christmas; the only thing we did differently this year was to replace the simple Christmas story readings at the Crib Service with an equally simple Nativity drama, all narrated by a few voices and acted by a few (adult) people. The Crib Service, as similar services in churches the country over, draws enough people to fill the building to bursting, and isn't always easy to manage. This time, there were real moments of attentive quiet, which was a lot to do with the drama. It was nothing at all to do with me, but originated, planned and executed by congregation members, which pleases me very much indeed. All the numbers were similar to last year, too, though my colleagues at other churches in the area report quite a lot of fluctuation.

I am still smarting a bit from a statement by one long-standing member of the congregation who told me some time after the event that he thought the Midnight Mass was 'incomprehensible to anyone new'. It was a quick phone conversation and I haven't delved into the matter yet, but it's hard to see how it's any more incomprehensible to anyone new than an ordinary Sunday Eucharist is. My guess is that this is a rationalisation of not liking the eastward-facing celebration, which we only adopt for the Midnight and the Easter Vigil; another guess would be that it's based on a sample size of one, i.e. the complainant, as it's difficult to see how they could have sampled the actual opinions of anyone coming through the door for the first time. I will have to ask the 19-year-old who I baptised earlier in the year so she could be a godmother to her friend's baby, and who turned up at the Midnight with two of her friends, and see what she thought.