Boxing Day

Today began with a trip to church to celebrate St Stephen with a Eucharist.

People sometimes ask me what I do over Christmas. The answer is always, go to church a lot and take a lot of services. They sometimes look downcast as though I’m missing out on something. The truth is I can’t imagine doing otherwise and love doing what I do over Christmas.

Most years it is the same – I get lots of nice food in and plan to cook in on Christmas Day. However on Christmas Day, I tend to feel completely numb by the time I get home from church and can’t be bothered. The cooking comes on Boxing Day as things start to feel a little more normal.

This year was a little different in that there was no bishop around in the Cathedral, of course. Generally speaking, Cathedrals expect to see the bishop sometime over Christmas and I’d usually expect the bishop to preach at one or other of the big services.

Numbers were up this year on last year by about 10%. It was quite a young crowd on Christmas Eve at midnight and more mixed on Christmas Day. There were just short of 200 of us out yesterday morning. Nine faithful souls (up three on last year) joined to remember Stephen this morning.
Stephen is one of the few biblical saints whom we know to have been good looking (he had the face of an angel) and his story is a reminder that Messiah’s are for life and not just for Christmas and might potentially cost us all rather a lot in the end.