Christmas Passed

In 2016 the late-Advent and Christmas period seemed entirely manageable, but this year the timing has brought a certain sense of strain, at least to me. Christmas Eve falling on a Sunday has meant that I was preaching five times over a twenty-four-hour period and, I’m afraid, all my sermons did cluster rather around the doctrine of the Incarnation, with a variety of different emphases. This came after the usual repertoire of nativity plays, carol concerts and other events which extends the Christmas season to the whole of the month of December, and backwards.

One of the tasks which occupies the last days of Advent is taking communion to people who aren’t going to be able to be in church over Christmas itself. This is no problem provided you know about them, and can build visits into the schedule. This year we only located one of Marion’s regulars on the Saturday before Christmas: she’d been trying to phone the lady in question but only that day did we discover she’d moved to a care home outside the parish a couple of weeks previously. I ended up arranging to see another indisposed couple on Christmas Eve after they failed to show for the morning service – had Christmas Eve been any other day than a Sunday, it would have made things easier. The liturgical concertina-ing was very strange as the day started out the Fourth Sunday of Advent and then magically transmuted into Christmas Eve partway through; all the usual preparations of moving furniture, changing altar linens, bringing in flowers and reordering had to be done after the morning Mass was over.

The one liturgical event I didn’t have to worry about was the Crib Service, as Marion the curate looked after it. Some of our usual actors and narrators for the tableau-style nativity we’ve done for the last few years weren’t available, so she thought it would be good to change to the more widespread model of having groups of children bringing up figures to assemble the crib scene at appropriate points in the story. I had visions of our china figures smashing to smithereens on the floor as the fingers of nervous infants turned to butter, so the congregation members responsible for the wooden figures of Mary and Joseph that already tour the parish during Advent in the homes of Messy Church families constructed all the other characters too. We used to do this at Lamford – a plastic crib set was used at the Crib Service and the ‘proper’ china ones were put in place afterwards. What we also did at Lamford was to have two younger choristers robed up and leading the groups of children with a pair of acolyte’s candles, so we imported that custom as well, and two of our more reliable youngsters did those honours. It all worked very well, even if some local people still wistfully remark what a shame it is we don’t have real donkeys taking part. If they could find them for me, I’d happily have the wretched creatures there.

Numbers at the Cribbage were significantly up; perhaps because it was a Sunday evening. The Midnight and 10am on Christmas Day were about level, and the 8am Prayer Book Mass down, but numbers for that are so low anyway it means very little, I suspect. The Midnight passed off without incident for virtually the first time, and certainly no repetition of the thurible mishap of last year.

We normally have a midweek Mass on Tuesday, but it being Boxing Day the worship committee had decided against it. It’s my usual day off tomorrow, and whereas once upon a time I would have said, well, I’ve already had a day off this week so I will work, I now take all the time off I can, not out of any particular sense of deserving it but simply from considerations of self-preservation. Boxing Day was my first full day without any church business since November. I will probably go to Marks and Spencer and look for trousers.

The thing I learned about myself was that I don’t think I could ever be a monk. Rick our faithful verger now attends Morning Prayer virtually every day, but in recent weeks he’s started turning up at Evening Prayer as well from time to time. We’ve also been joined in the morning lately by Ken, who is one of the churchwardens of a nearby evangelical parish church. Then he began to arrive in the evening too. As the last week before Christmas drew on they were both there, all the time. I came into church on Saturday 23^rd intending to do some photocopying before saying the holy Office and found them both seated in the Lady Chapel ready to pray. ‘Have you been waiting long?’ I asked, fearful that they’d been hanging round for ages, but they assured me they’d only just got there. ‘Only I don’t usually say Evening Prayer at any set time on Saturdays, just when I can get here,’ I went on. ‘It’s very faithful of you to come to the Office in the evening, Ken’, I offered. ‘It’s an oasis of calm amid all the madness’, he smiled. The trouble is that it turns the Evening Office, from my point of view, into yet another liturgical performance in which I lead other people in their prayer, albeit a very low-key one. When you come in to church and your heart sinks at the prospect of joining your fellow-Christians in worship, even if ever so slightly before you catch it up, to the extent that you have to combat the inner thought ‘oh not these buggers again', then your faith has worn quite threadbare underfoot, I fear. That's not what monks are supposed to think about their brethren.

On Christmas Eve when I came into the church after taking communion to Mr & Mrs Stirling, nobody else was there. I said Evening Prayer, in the dark, on my own for the first time in ages. As the liturgical season always changes in the evening, it was the first Office of Christmastide and it was lovely.