Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas Eve, friends. 

We held services today at 11AM, 5PM, and 7PM. It’s a lot, but much more manageable than it used to be. We used to have an 11PM service, but we cancelled it a few years ago—there were about 50 die-hards who would come but it was unnecessarily rough on us as a clergy couple with young children. We’ve been moving the service gradually earlier, first 9PM, now 7. The 11AM was added a few years ago, because we would always hear of people who were traveling or entertaining family at night or just didn’t want to drive in the dark. It’s a smaller service—60 or so—but the spirit is so lovely.

5PM, pictured above, is led by my amazing colleague, Rev. Dr. Erin Reed Cooper. She tells the Christmas story using a storytelling method called Godly Play, and the kids all come up around her. It’s magical. The kids are literally leaning in quietly for 20 minutes to find out what happens next. There are 160 or so people here tonight and it feels like 95% of them are under 5. As I stood in the lobby greeting folks as they arrived, there were meltdowns, poopy diapers needing changing, pajamas, and tons of loving and mildly stressed parents and grandparents. We have a good group of folks who are pretty serious about raising their kids in this religious tradition. Christmas is more powerful when it’s part of a larger tradition the kids are learning about and practicing each week. 

The 7PM is always my favorite. One, because it’s dark and Christmas in the dark kicks ass. But also because, after 15 years here, it’s sweet for me to see all the college students and young adults who come back and to be able to remember them as kids growing up here. That they want to come back and visit at Christmas is the best.

Tonight in worship we tried something different. And it almost backfired spectacularly. Instead of an Advent wreath, we built a manger over the four Sundays out of found materials: a piece of plywood, a 3-legged coffee table, a shipping pallet, and a window screen (you can see it behind Erin in the picture above). Tonight, our makeshift manger was lit from within by about 50 candles. At the time in the service when we light the handheld candles and sing Silent Night (a tradition I want to change next year… Silent Night is not even in the top 20 of Christmas songs), we invited people on the center aisle to come forward and light their candle from the Christ candle in the manger. It was a neat idea—people come to the manger to receive the light, but the overhead lights got turned a bit too low, and it was just a bit too dark, and the folks coming to the manger had to walk up and down 3 steps. Well, sure enough, one of my favorite people in the congregation lost his balance on the stairs, fell into a young woman, and almost knocked her into the flaming manger. THAT would have been a memorable Christmas Eve. Thank you God, that everyone was fine. 

It’s been a good Advent and Christmas. Maybe next year we’ll do it again… but in the abandoned car lot and without Silent Night.