What is in Kelvin's Head?

10 Correct Opinions About Christmas Carols

27/12/2018
Public service announcement.

The following opinions are all correct.
1. The first carol on Christmas Day should always be Christians Awake Salute the Happy Morn. It should be sung lustily and with the last line repeated.
2. While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night may be sung to almost any tune. It must not, however, be sung to the tune Winchester Old
  - Acceptable tunes shall include:
    
    Liverpool
    
    Glasgow
    
    Lyngham
    
    Old Foster
    
    Sweet Chiming Christmas Bells
    
    Cranbrook – This may only be used once in every decade in any one place. There’s a limit to how entertaining it is.
3. The best carol of all is It Came Upon the Midnight Clear and it must be sung to the tune Noel by Arthur Sullivan. There are many things in which the US based Episcopal Church is correct but it is incorrect in its choice of tune for this carol. It may also be sung at Michaelmas. The incorrect words “It Came upon a midnight clear” are anathema. They have as much place in the Christian faith as Sundays before Advent or Sundays before Lent – ie none whatsoever.
4. Jingle Bells is not a carol.
5. The carol Of the Father’s Love Begotten may be sung at any time from Advent Sunday until the Feast of Candlemas. It must only be sung to the words agreed by Mr Frikki Walker and myself. The verse about seer and sybyl must always be included as it is both profound and reminds us all of Sybil Fawlty. I have every intention of broadcasting this carol unto the nation at the earliest opportunity so that everyone else may copy the St Mary’s version of the words.
6. 10 points may be claimed for anyone spotting a heresy in any carol. A bonus of 50 points is awarded to anyone who can come up with a heresy-free version that people will enjoy singing.
  - Your starter for 10 is “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see” which sounds like Docetism to me.
7. Anyone claiming that carols should be sung “in the original version” shall be required to sing Hark How All The Welkin Rings at the next carol service they are at and will then be required to explain to everyone at the door what a welkin is.
8. In the Bleak Midwinter may be sung, even though Jesus probably was not born amidst snow. However, it may only be sung by a good choir singing the Harold Darke version.
9. O Come All Ye Faithful is a Jacobite rallying call and is most proper for Scottish Episcopalians to sing.
10. Christmas cake should be eaten with cheese and not marzipan and icing.
Thank you for your attention.
Christmas carols

23 responses to “What if this is the end of the Eucharist?”

Thomas Scott

06/05/2020

Just noticing here that DGD (of happy memory) seems to have left out of his catalogue of joyous, sad, perilous, and solemn occasions any instance of celebrating during a plague or pestilence. I’m not worried about the mass. The eucharist need not be celebrated as though it were a car battery, as if not offering it now would somehow allow the power to run down. It is not at risk, we are, which I think is your point. The questions asked are worth asking, of course.

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Mo Nicholson

06/05/2020

Mo Nicholson. This is an intriguing discussion and what I would like to add to it is the observation that I have had to learn the hard way that participation in the Eucharist being made impossible in no way diminishes an individual’s ability to worship God or be in fellowship with other believers. I am barred from receiving Holy Communion in the Catholic church because allergies make this impossible for me. The pain induced by this has little to do with feeling separation from God, in fact nothing at all as I do not feel that. It comes from feeling excluded from the community, different sections if which regard it as desirable or tolerable that a member of the community should be excluded in this way. This experience has made me understand as never before that if we place prime value on liturgical celebrations, ir indeed anything else, above charity, compassion, welcome and inclusivity, in other words love, then we have become the sounding gong which St Paul warned against. If we truly believe that God is love, as I do, then it is obvious that it is love for one another which makes us true children of God our Father, and in light of this we could begin to look at these present challenging circumstances as simply an opportunity to love more, to reach out to one another in whatever way possible in the knowledge that this is what actually matters and always did. Only perhaps we were tempted to almost make a fetish of our rituals, sacraments and so on. And perhaps this can show us a better way more adapted to the world we are supposed to serve.

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Lynsay Downs

06/05/2020

You and your conversation with Dave Roberts prompted me to write this. Does it resonate for you?

https://astonishing.community/2020/05/06/conversations-in-coronatide/

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1. Kelvin
  
  06/05/2020
  
  Thanks Lynsay – yes, it does resonate with me very much.
  
  I’ve shared it on facebook. I think it is really helpful.
  
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Fr Keith

06/05/2020

Thanks again for such a thoughtful piece. With the Eucharist central to much of, at least Anglican/Episcopalian, worship in recent generations, we perhaps forget that the Church in these islands was, between the Reformation and the liturgical revivals of the 19th and 20th centuries, sustained by Mattins and Evensong as the regular diet of worship on Sundays. I’m not advocating a return to such times, but there is, as you suggest, work to be done on non-Eucharistic worship (though not defining it as a negative). Thanks again.

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Fenland Boy

07/05/2020

For the record, I’m not in favour of lay presidency at the Eucharist. I believe, for better or worse, in an ordered church.

Why are you concerned about lay Presidency?

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Chuck

08/05/2020

May I say respectfully, lighten up. Many Anglicans/Episcopalians lived on the edges of civilization in the nascent U.S. and various elements of the British Empire. Priests to celebrate the Holy Eucharist and to baptize were seldom seen, at most twice a year in many areas. (Bishops, only every several years.) The Church carried on in this manner decade after decade. If circumstances require, the Church will carry on again despite our profound sense of loss.

I should add, to those who grew up under threat or reality of war, persecution, oppression, famine, other disease, etc, the present difficulty is not unfamiliar in many respects.

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Miriam MacCarthy

08/05/2020

Thank you! It is wonderful to read these serious, personal thoughts about the Eucharist. My feeling is that it has become celebrated to the point of boredom. Church, and what we do in it, is in danger of becoming simply a habit. It could just as well be crackerjack for a fast-asleep congregation. My heresy is that the direction Jesus gave is to “do this in remembrance of me”, and that means everything we eat at any time, whether alone or with others, in thanksgiving. If that is seriously done, it has vastly more meaning. It really gets ones attention and requires preparation. Would not become popular or usual, I predict!

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