Christmas round-up

Oh, I so wished I’d blogged a few days ago, when I was still feeling chirpy about our lovely Christingle and Christmas Day services, and not gloomy about Sunday, when I made the mistake of…getting out the desert bag.  (Don’t touch! Don’t touch!  Sit back!  Don’t touch!  etc.)

Christingle..There are a lot of lovely photos of this service out there, I need to upload a few.  This year we sang a brand-new-song written for the Children’s Society who produce the Christingle materials  -  it was a good song and we were very ably accompanied by a friend of Fidge and Alison’s who played on gamely even when we put all the lights out.  Other good bits:  We made our own Christingles, rather than doing the “Here’s one I made earlier” thing.  This was fun and relaxed, and no-one hurt themselves (the unwritten hope for every Christingle service).  People got a chance to chat and interact – one of the children made a Christingle for the pianist – and even thought there was quite a relaxed feeling, when we switched out the light for the hunt-the-lit Christingle, the mood changed completely.  It was great being in the totally dark church with just the candlelight.  The children holding the lit Christingles, even the 2-year olds, were just enthralled and so was I.

Christmas Day….We had a bit of a push on to make this more of a child-friendly, celebratory service this year and it felt good to me.

This year, after attending so many Fischy Music events over the years that I feel like a groupie, I finally got up the nerve to stand up in front of the congregation and teach some of the songs, with motions.  I did one song in Gaelic at our Gaelic family service (a translation of “May you find peace”) and have been doing “Welcome Everybody” with the children at St.C’s downstairs for a wee while now.  At the Christingle service, we did  “May you find peace” towards the end (rehearsing it before the service Iona style) and on Christmas Day we sang “Welcome Everybody” using the same approach.  Every time I sing Fischy I welcome the thoughtful, simple lyrics which seem to meet our needs so much better than the older hymns we often sing.  (“Here we are together, with all our hopes and fears”

As well as Fischy Music, the good bits were:  people doing a show and tell of the presents they’d opened that morning (something Gil remembered from her childhood Christmas Day services) and we also had a little scratch Nativity.

I have resisted doing a Nativity play for the four years that I’ve been involved in the children’s work at St. C’s.  Why?  A number of reasons.  One, I don’t want to pick children for parts, and leave others out.   I don’t want the children to have to spend all their church time in the weeks leading up to Christmas rehearsing and memorising lines.  It might not even be possible, as people aren’t able to attend every week.  Finally, many of our children are infant school aged and therefore do a Nativity at school every year.  But we discussed nativity plays at the Tuesday group where we were looking at what John Bell has to say about Christmas (he doesn’t like Nativity plays) and we thought about doing something simple that might meet some of the the Nativity needs.

On the day, we used a big box (a special trunk belonging to the Rector) filled with costumes – a blue shawl for Mary, a homespun Harris Tweed one for Joseph, tea towels, angel wings, about 14 stuffed sheep…)  Samuel and I had made a super manger made out of scrap wood and I had bought a special new baby boy doll which is now retired to the creche.  As Gil read the Gospel, with sympathetic pauses, children came up and put on a bit of a costume.  At the end of the Gospel we had a gorgeous tableau.

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