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Festive Frolics and Fun
Every year, at this time, I hold a little private competition. The prize, if there was one, and there isn't, goes to the organisation that has the earliest Christmas event. For a month now hardly a day has gone by without yet another poster dropping through the door, with a note urging me to display it on the church noticeboards so that our congregations may join in the premature jollification. To date, the field is being led by a Nonconformist Church which held a Christmas Bazaar on 6 November.
The sixth of November! Usually, the ink on the word 'Advent' has hardly had time to dry before the decorations are unfurled. In this case the purple candles were still in the box. In a way, I can see the advantages of spreading the celebration of the birth of Our Lord over an extended period, even though I could not, in all conscience, go along with them.
The timing of Christmass, this year, is the worst case scenario. December 25th falls on a Saturday. That usually means playing to empty houses the next day. Having a service of nine lessons and carols during the Christmass season and not in Advent normally leaves us with the dilemma of who has to read two lessons instead of just the one. With the First Sunday of Christmass falling on 26 December, we might have been left wondering who would read the other eight. We cancelled it.
Christmass Eve is, in any year, what we categorise as 'fraught'. Even in secular, non-churchgoing households it is a powder keg waiting to ignite. To add to the already overloaded itinerary of two packed and wildly ecstatic Christingle services and the Midnight Mass of the Nativity, we have people wanting to be married. This is a wonderfully romantic notion but it belongs to an age where incumbents had only one church to look after, and a curate to assist.
The day after Christmass Day is the Feast of S. Stephen the Martyr. Before I was ordained I wondered why that was. I have come to the conclusion that it is so that we realise that there was somebody who was in a worse state than we are - but only just. We priests can certainly empathise with him.
May God bless you all, Fr Allan
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