As I frequently state, one of the things I like about the Christmas holidays is that I actually get them 'off', ie although I work in a school, I'm on a 52-week contract. In 2006, I took the opportunity to attend more non-obligation Masses than I usually do, particularly as a lot of good feasts occur in rapid succession during Christmastide. For 2007, I made it my goal to attend Mass on each day in the octave of Christmas. In a different church.
Logically enough, my warm up didn't involve a Mass at all, nor any celebration of the Eucharist. For some years now, I've gone to the carol service at my local Anglican church, St Nicholas's, on the Sunday before Christmas with my parents, the one occasion in the year we all attend a service together. 2007 was particularly special as one of my sisters came as well.
The service is modelled on the famous one from the chapel of King's College, Cambridge. I went to the service with a sense that things were slightly fraught at home and in a state of mild fatigue after a long term. This left me vulnerable to losing my composure on hearing some of the better lines, such as the supplication in the opening prayer - that we remember 'those who know not the Lord Jesus, or who love Him not, or who by sin have offended Him'. The last reading is the prologue to John's Gospel, which is followed by Hark the Herald Angels Sing. I was too cut up to sing the last two verses.
On the one hand, the Solemnity of Our Lord's Nativity needs no introduction or explanation. However, some aspects of my attachment to it are more specific than others.
My family is Polish on my father's side and the Polish tradition is to start celebrating Christmas with a vigil - or Wigilia. Broadly speaking, the family meet up on the evening of 24 December and eat lots of food - although nothing with meat, as Christmas Eve is a day of abstinence in Poland. Once the first lot of eating's been cleared, the party retires to the living room where carols and presents exchanged. Nor does it finish with Midnight Mass - the festivities traditionally continue for some time afterwards, with Christmas Day serving principally to sleep things off.
As my Mum isn't Polish, we don't do a fully traditional Wigilia, but, in recent years, we've decided that we'd like to finish the evening by going to a Midnight Mass. I hadn't realised previously what I'd been missing out on; on reflection, it's the only day of the year when Mass is celebrated at midnight on it seems almost bad manners not to go, particularly as there's a traditional thirty-minute warm-up.
This year - as last year - we went to St Luke the Evangelist in Whiston, about twenty minutes on foot from my Grandad's house. As well as accessibility, is has the added bonus of guaranteed familiar faces. Our school chaplain is a priest based at St Luke's, while I saw a pleasing number of our pupils and their parents.
The Church has different readings for Christmas depending on when Mass is being celebrated. The Gospel for Midnight is taken from Luke 2, concluding with the words 'Glory to God in the highest'. It's perhaps a little unfortunate that this comes after the first Gloria since Christ the King, but this is a minor quibble.
As we approached the sermon, I reflected that it must be tricky to find something new and original to say every year. The centrepoint on this occasion was an account of a Midnight Mass in 1944 where a number of PoWs were in attendance - with an armed escort. The church's organist was ill, but one of the prisoners stepped in to provide music for the service, stressing that Christmas underlines our common humanity. This was complemented with a story of a Good Samaritan on the New York Metro and with extracts from the Patriarch of Jerusalem's Christmas letter.
Got in at 1:30am. A good start to Christmastide.
Full of turkey and Christmas pudding, I got up bright and early on Boxing Day and made my way to Mass at my local parish church, St Anne and Blessed Dominic.
I think it's a great shame that the first Christian martyr should have been almost forgotten in the UK, even though his feast is a public holiday. I first became aware of the occasion through Good King Wenceslas and I suppose the idea of a special day so close to Christmas has intrigued me ever since.
In 2007, we were fortunate enough to have a permanent deacon ordained in our parish. John McLoughlin has been a good friend of ours for some years now and as St Stephen is the patron of deacons, I was pleased to see John at Mass with his wife on his special day.
Having exchanged greetings with John, I was given an unexpected opportunty to appreciate the first reading; I was asked to do it. I was happy to oblige; I don't have any objection to reading in church, but I generally don't do it from one year to the next and it was a privilege to do so on such an auspicious day. The story from Acts is well-known, but I find particularly poignant the deliberate parallels between the dying Stephen and Christ on the Cross, as I do the reference to Saul/Paul at the end.The Gospel, referring as it did to betrayal and letting the Spirit of God speak in the heart, sat well with this.
There was much material for a sermon and the priest didn't disappoint. A priest from Pakistan spent some time in our parish parish recently and we were reminded that Pakistan is one of the - thankfully few - places in today's world where Christians are persecuted simply for being Christians - up to and including death. However, the Christian calling of the Pakistani martyr may be much harder than that of the British Christian, but this doesn't make it higher, only different.
St Stephen is also the patron of altar servers, but there aren't any in our parish at the moment. However, some good friends of mine were praised by name for having been altar servers and for their now serving the Church in other ways.
Currently listening to: Radio 4's 'The Now Show' - another Listen-Again jobby. Current mood: contemplative.
