What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Palm Sunday

    There’s no sermon from yesterday to upload. It is the only Sunday in the year when we have no preaching and simply let the story do the work. It is our custom on Palm Sunday to read the Passion story – that’s the story of the end of Jesus’s life from whichever gospel we have been reading through the year.

    Here at St Mary’s, the congregation, who are the body of Christ, read the words of Jesus whilst two people at the front narrate the rest of the story.

    Yesterday is probably the chilliest Palm Sunday on record. Here in this part of the world, we usually associate Holy Week with a growing sense of spring. New life is all around us. This year, it feels as though it hasn’t quite arrived.

    However, that’s a reminder that Holy Week is celebrated in all kinds of contexts. I struggle a bit working out how people could celebrate Easter in the autumn, but that, of course, is what happens in the southern hemisphere. There must be places where Palm Sunday is always held in the snow and it is hard to imagine what that is like.

    As it was yesterday, there was not much snow here. Much of the rest of the country was covered in it but it was a clear, if bracing day.

    I found myself taking to liturgical gloves.

    Brrr.

5 responses to “Silly headline”

  1. Zebadee Avatar
    Zebadee

    The BBC and certain ‘academics’ are only about three hundred years behind the times. Of course the tune IS still being used today to sing this wonderful carol. We only wish that we could be in St Marys on Christmas Day to sing it with you.

    Reply
  2. Elizabeth Avatar
    Elizabeth

    I remember being very confused the first time I heard the carol sung to a tune that wasn’t On Ilkla’ Moor, and thinking that they did things rather oddly on this charming island.

    Reply
  3. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    Well, congratulations to them for actually having had the balls to talk to an academic, if not the brains to make much of the story. That’s half a step up from the bulk of modern journalism.

    Form the article: He said carols – many of which have folk roots –

    Actually, *all* carols have to be a mediaeval (round) dance tune, otherwise they’re merely Christmas hymns (cf Away in a Manger only dating from around 1885). Natch.

    Reply
  4. chris Avatar
    chris

    The Ilkla’ Moor tune has also been sung in the Cathedral of The Isles, in recent years.

    Reply
  5. kelvin Avatar
    kelvin

    of course it has – and in many a place of good taste.

    Reply

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