It does feel rather difficult to get back to normal, whatever normal is. I’ve been neglecting the blog (and everything else) over the last few days.
I love Christmas but I am all too aware that it is very different for me than for most people. This year it has been just lovely. Fabulous music – “worthy of a very musical cathedral”, as someone said to me at morning prayer on St Stephen’s day. It has been lovely to welcome so many people into the building too. Christmas Day is a treat – I love standing at the door and saying hello to so many people whom I just don’t [yet] know.
In my head, I get all ready for Christmas Day and lay in lots of food and plan to cook myself a nice meal after I get home. In the end, I didn’t feel much like it and cooked the fatted hen on Boxing Day instead.
Highlights for me this year were:
- The excitement of the Carol Service
- The stillness when we went to almost candlelight at Midnight Mass
- The singing of While Shepherds Watched to Lyngham – an inspired choice. (Cranbrook next year)
- The dancebeat of the drum for Ecce Novum on Christmas Day
What about you?
What – the angels were not a highlight for you – especially as you sensed them during a very appropriate line of While Shepherd’s Watched?
Yes – true, censing the angels as a highlight, but it is subsumed into While Shepherds Watched, listed above.
They got their own special treatment at the words, “forthwith, Appeared a shining throng…”
Didn’t the servants get their feast on Boxing day after serving their master on Christmas day so as a servant you got your feast on the right day.
For me Christmas was mixed as my brother died last Christmas. I did attend a Christmas eve service which ended in silence and candlelight.
-your lurking low church non-theist
My highlights?
The crowds who turned out for the Crib Service on Christmas eve afternoon.
The sound of the theme tune for Harry Potter which was played as the crowds gathered for the Nativity Play par excellence.
That verse with the descant on our final hymn at Midnight Mass (O Come all Ye Faithful) always makes me cry.
Singing the new arrangement of Watts’ Cradle Song at our carol service: having a new grandson made me so emotional that the words “Hush my darling…” almost didn’t come out at all. Thanks to KB for suggesting this: another new carol in our repertoire!
The six of us here in Monterrey (sister & husband, cousin & wife, nephew and I) returned by executive class bus to the family village in Hidalgo State on the 23rd. Our village is all family (by blood or marriage) and an agricultural co-op.
Half Baptist and half Anglopalian, we share asimple ecumenical chapel with one cousin the Baptist preacher and another cousin our priest. We had a joint service Christmas Eve because the Baptists love the Anglican ritual this time of year. It was a lovely service, although routine. But the highlight was the handsome, clear voiced young cousin who sang at the close of the service. In a darkened chapel he was lit by a semicircle of luminaria blanca at his feet as he sang Silent Night in German and Spanish, while accompanying himself with Spanish guitar. It was beautiful.
The biggest event of the festival for all of us I wrote about at Mad Priests blog. It is a way down the page.