Tag Archives: Christingle

Church

Record Breaking Numbers?

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Glowing Christingles

We’re in the middle of the busiest time at St James. Last night was the traditional Nine Lessons and Carols service, that had a record breaking 302 people attend – with people stood packed into the vestry, and stood in the North Aisle – apparently it got so hot in the building that the organ went out of tune… It certainly seems like we’re going to have to do the same as we do with the Christingle services, and run the whole thing twice next year in order to accommodate everybody who wants to attend.

Today we had the four Christingle services. We were on duty for the 2pm and 4pm services, with Beth acting as sidesperson and looking after the sound system, whilst I discovered a new calling as a doorman keeping track of who was coming in, and more importantly collecting unused tickets that people had got ‘just in case’ to allow the one or two people who turn up on the off chance an opportunity to get in. Thanks to the flu bug doing the rounds in the village there were quite a few returns, although at the 4pm, those were all used, and one family decided to come back for the 6pm service as there were no seats left at 4pm – so it looks like we’ll get somewhere between 600 and 800 people through the doors for those services alone – and we haven’t even got to Christmas itself.

The Midnight Communion is usually packed – so on the basis of the turnout last night we’re expecting to be jam packed – quite how we can expand capacity at that service I don’t know. We’re then back up for the 11am service tomorrow morning – although there is also an 8am and 9:30am service too. Certainly it’s looking like we may well have another record in terms of the number of people through the doors over the Christmas period.

We have a few pictures of the 4pm Christingle service up on my Flickr stream, although as usual with shots of this service the majority are restricted access because of all the children in the pictures.

Church

Anybody Any Good With Oranges and Cocktail Sticks?

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Glow Stick Christingle

A few years back, St James would hold a single Christingle service on Christmas Eve, then came the year that 500 people all turned up…

After that the decision was taken to hold the service twice, at 2pm and 4pm, and to allocate seating using free tickets.

Roll on to this year, and we had three services planned, at 2pm, 4pm and 6pm, with 200 tickets for each. The tickets were made available at the beginning of December, and within days had gone, and we’ve had so many people phoning up wanting tickets, that we’ve now had to add a fourth Christingle service at 12 o’clock – and it looks likely that we’ll fill the Church then too.

That of course leaves us with one big problem, traditionally the junior choir have made the actual Christingle’s – not too much of a problem when we had one service, but with so many people coming along now, short of bringing child slavery to Finchampstead we need lots of extra help to put them all together. It’s not overly complicated – basically four cocktail sticks, a glow stick (much to the chagrin of the traditionalists the combination of small children, candles and a jam packed church was too much for Health and Safety), an orange and some red ribbon – but there are a lot to do. The production line gets going on Saturday afternoon at the Parish Centre!

Once those four services are done though, there is the other popular service, Midnight Mass – one service we can’t do more than once, so we just have to try and fit everybody in. Last year we had people standing in the vestry and more people standing in the north aisle – heaven knows where we’ll put people if more turn up this year.

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Glow Stick Christingle

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Glow Stick Christingle

I posted a week ago that like Chelmsford Cathedral, we were trying out Glow Candles in our Christingles this year. We’ve just got back having sung in the choir at the second of the three Christingle Services today, and acted as stewards for the third, and all in all the new style Christingles seem to have gone down pretty well.

There certainly have been complaints, and indeed the Rector was fielding a number of grumbles of the sort being raised by MP Eric Pickles in the article in the Telegraph, with grumbles about health and safety gone too far, taking the magic out of the service, and so on, but universally the comments weren’t coming from the children or the parents. Certainly amongst the children of the choir who attended the 4pm service, in fact one of the choristers said she wasn’t interested in the orange or the sweets, but only wanted to take away the glow stick, and various of the other children were having a great time rushing around the lawn outside the parish centre in the dark with the glow sticks too. There were also a number of positive comments from parents, who in previous years have had worries with their younger children, and had a fairly stressful time through that part of the service keeping an eye on their offspring making sure they didn’t burn themselves. Indeed, one parent actually thanked us for taking the decision to change.

Holding Up the Christingles

Whilst the glow produced by the Glow Candles probably isn’t as bright as the candles would be, it certainly is enough to be effective, especially at the later services where it is dark outside, and was certainly enough for people to be able to read their service sheets by.

The change to Glow Candles was also used to make a theological point. Since once they are lit they stay alight as people left the Church, this was to symbolise everybody taking the light of Christ out into the world – something we couldn’t do with candles.

Telling the Christmas Story

Whilst by no means do I think this is the end of the discussion, it certainly seems to have been pretty successful in terms of the target audience. I’m sure when the time to organise our Christingles comes around again we’ll have people arguing for a return to candles. I took some snapshots of the 6pm service, which can be found here, which hopefully will give some idea of the differences with using the Glow Candles – it will also give some idea of the numbers of people we have to handle – upwards of 250 people at each of the three services, with even people sitting in the choir stalls behind the altar at the 6pm service.

Church

Strange Coincidences

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Dave over at Cartoon Church this week posted an item about the Christingle Kerfuffle going on at Chelmsford Cathedral, which has made the national press, and even got the local MP complaining, about the fact that they have chosen to replace the lit candles with Glow Candles. By a strange coincidence the glow candle ‘safety’ Christingle was also the subject of Dave’s cartoon for the Church Times this week.

Interestingly, it seems like Chelmsford have been doing what us at St James have done, which is to combine the Crib Service with the Christingle, and like us, they have a lot of people attending (we actually hold the service three times on Christmas Eve now). In another strange coincidence, I forwarded the URL of Dave’s posting on to a couple of people at the Church, and the answer came back saying that we were trying out the Glow Candles too! Since once they’ve been activated, the Glow Candles last for eight hours, the expectation is that they might well be better than the candles as they will safely continue to glow well after the service, rather than the candles, which will just be blown out after the service and never be lit again. Having said that, the lights may last beyond the service, but I’m still sure that most of the sweets won’t even make it beyond the door before they’re consumed!