Blue Christmas

It seems to have developed in the USA, the Blue Christmas idea: a church service that acknowledges that Christmas isn't all children singing and general loveliness, but is bloody hard for a surprising number of people, because of bereavement, bad circumstances, or many other reasons, all of which seem to be thrown into pitilessly sharp relief by the surrounding standardised mirth. These people still quite want to mark the season, but don't necessarily feel able to buy into the whole package (and 'buy' is an apposite metaphor). So many conversations I have with people around this time of year revolve around similar feelings, feelings which go unrecognised by what happens in church. 

I thought doing Blue Christmas might be helpful. I considered it last year but ran out of time, and this year spent a while planning how it might work. Using material drawn from elsewhere, including from an Anglican church in Teddington which seems to be the closest to us trying something similar, I put together an order of service, consisting of prayers, a couple of readings and quiet hymns, and made up a plainchant office hymn which nobody spotted was a made-up plainchant office hymn. I sang this with Marion our curate's son and despite my incipient cold and his lately broken voice which at the moment wobbles around tenor we managed to get through it, and the Nunc Dimittis. Another congregation member who is a very accomplished musician played the violin. I arranged the church as in the photo, the icon of the Nativity I mentioned a few days ago surrounded by candles and the benches arranged in a semicircle around. Everyone was issued with a paper star to write a prayer on, if desired, and these were left in front of the icon during the quiet bits. 

Marion thought it was 'the best Christmas service this year', which was gratifying, but it only attracted one person who wasn't a regular member of the congregation (who came 'because I heard you were doing it and wanted to see what happens'). It's a far cry from what the Teddington folk said happened there, where lots of people turned up merely from a few flyers left in the pews. It wasn't really intended for those who'd be in church over Christmas anyway. It may be one of those things that everyone says is a good idea but turns out not to work here even if it does elsewhere. We'll see what happens next year. 

PS. Marion took the order of service to someone whose husband's funeral she'd taken and she prayed through it on her own.