Year End Giving

As you prayerfully weigh your many opportunities for charitable giving during the final weeks of 2005, please consider contributing to the ongoing ministry and work of the King's Meadow Study Center. Thank you and merry Christmas.

Lessons and Carols

Last night Greg Wilbur, along with the choir and orchestra he leads at Christ Community Church, conducted a wonderful service of Lessons and Carols. It is one of my favorite Advent traditions. And once again, the evening was a complete delight.

The service of Lessons and Carols has long been associated with the King's College Chapel, Cambridge but over the years it has become a staple of the Advent repertoire all around the world. The service consists of nine Scripture lessons which alternate with carols of a similar theme. The lessons and carols tell of the Fall of Man, the promise of a Savior by the prophets, the annunciation to Mary, the shepherds and angels, and ends with the reading of John's Gospel prologue.

In the book Christmas Spirit, Greg Wilbur has written:

The service, originally intended for Christmas Eve, follows a form laid down by the King's College Dean, Eric Milner-White, in 1918. As he saw it, the strength of the service lay in the Scripture readings which outline the need for redemption, the promise of a Savior, and the Nativity itself. Milner-White patterned his service on an Order of Worship drawn up by E.W. Benson, later Archbishop of Canterbury, for use in the wooden shed which then served as his cathedral in Truro for 10 PM on Christmas Eve 1880. A.C. Benson recalled, "My father arranged from ancient sources a little service for Christmas Eve--nine carols and nine tiny lessons, which were read by various officers of the Church, beginning with a chorister, and ending, through the different grades, with the Bishop."

The suggestion for the service had come from G.H.S. Walpole who later became the Bishop of Edinburgh. The service in Cambridge has been adapted and emulated throughout the world. With the exception of 1930, the BBC has broadcast the concert annually since 1928. This includes the period of the Second World War, when the ancient glass (and also all heat) had been removed from the Chapel and the name of King's College could not be broadcast for security reasons.

The combination of prayers, liturgy, carols, Scripture, and congregational worship creates a solemnity that recognizes the historic nature of the Christian faith as well as a celebration of the fulfilled promise of redemption.

For me, Yuletide is really not altogether underway until after this service. Afterward, I cannot help but be in the "Christmas Spirit."

Advent Pleasures

During Advent I always like to go back and reread a handful of old favorites--books that really provoke a profound sense anticipation apt for the season. G.K Chesterton's many Christmas essays and poems, which inspired the Advent meditation-in-verse I posted yesterday, are the first to be pulled off the library shelves. Arthur Quiller-Couch has some great Christmas stories set in and around Cornwall at the beginning of the 20th century. I read them lazily, haphazardly, and joyously. Miss Read also has a collection of Christmas tales I love to browse through. And just for fun, Karen and I always try to read a Jan Karon novel aloud during Advent. Her Christmas novel, Shepherds Abiding is a particular delight.

All of these familiar books make the holiday season just that much more pleasurable.

As far as viewing goes, I am terribly predictable: It's a Wonderful Life, White Christmas and Miracle on 34th Street are our family's film staples. I know that I am supposed to love Christmas Story as well, but it has never been a must see tradition for us. The last couple of years, I've also been prone to pull out the Lord of the Rings DVD set for some random sampling of favorite scenes (which is when I usually complain for the umpteenth time that Peter Jackson's greatest mistake was in cutting Tom Bombadil out of the screenplay).

But, I'm really not that much of a movie-goer or movie-watcher. I'd rather read. I do, however, listen to a great deal of Christmas music. In addition to a wide-ranging Classical choir repertoire, I dearly love Celtic Christmas music. I've compiled quite a collection over the years and listen pretty constantly during Advent.

This year, of course, I've prepared for the film version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by rereading all of the Narnia books. But, that's not my usual Advent fare.

All-in-all, it is the poetry that I love the most about this time of year and its joyous celebrations. It just seems that Yuletide is tailor-made for verse and that verse is tailor-made for Yuletide.

Aslan's On the Move

First thing this morning, our entire church staff went to see the new Narnia movie The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Afterward, Greg Wilbur reviewed the film for the Reformation 21 webzine. I don't want to spoil it for you--but, he very appropriately gives it "two thumbs up."

The Whip of Advent

The pitch of the stall was glorious
Though the straw was dusty and old
The wind sang with orchestral beauty
Though it blew bitter and cold

The night was mysteriously gleaming
Though the earth was fallen, forlorn
For under the eaves of splendor
A child--The Child--was born

Oxen Sheep and doves
Crowded round Nativity's scene
Though the world still failed to grasp
T’was here that peace had been

Cast out into a cave
When no room was found for Him
His coming was a scourge
That cleansed a robber's den

While the Temple's become a cattle stall
Where beasts and such are sold
The Child's turned Manger into Temple
And changed the base to gold

Tis the paradox of the ages:
Worldly wisdom will ne're relent
To notice signs of visitation
Nor the cords of the whip of Advent

Mistletoe

The little berries of the Mistletoe plant, renowned for their healing powers, became a Medieval symbol of God’s provision and grace. Even when the vast northern forests were buried in deep snows and the hardwood trees had lost all their foliage, the Mistletoe continued to bloom--to offer its medicine of hope to the afflicted and the needy.

Often, families would decorate their doorways with little sprigs of the plant as reminders of providential love. It became a happy ritual for lovers to kiss beneath the sprigs as a kind of covenantal affirmation or renewal of their fealty in the sight of God. A single berry was to be plucked from the sprig for each kiss. Often the bare sprigs were kept as testimony to the couples’ vows. Sometime in about the tenth century or so, the hanging of the Mistletoe became an Advent and Christmas tradition.

St. Nick

The fourth century pastor who inspired the tradition of Santa Claus, may not have lived at the North Pole or traveled by reindeer and sleigh but he certainly was a paradigm of graciousness, generosity, and Christian charity. Nicholas of Myra’s great love and concern for children drew him into a crusade that ultimately resulted in protective Imperial statutes banning child-abuse and abortion--statutes that remained in place in Byzantium for nearly a thousand years.

Though little is known of his childhood, he was probably born to wealthy parents at Patara in Lycia, a Roman province of Asia Minor. As a young man noted for his piety, judiciousness, and charity, he was chosen bishop of the then rundown diocese of Myra. There he became gained renown for his personal holiness, evangelistic zeal, and pastoral compassion.

Early Byzantine histories reported that he suffered imprisonment and made a famous profession of faith during the persecution of Diocletian. He was also reputedly present at the Council of Nicaea, where he forthrightly condemned there heresy of Arianism--one story holds that he actually punched the heretic Arius in the nose. Ho, ho, ho!

But it was his love for and care of children that gained him his greatest renown. Though much of what we know about his charitable work on behalf of the poor, the despised, and the rejected has been distorted by legend and lore over the centuries, it is evident that he was a particular champion of the downtrodden, bestowing upon them gifts as tokens of the grace and mercy of the Gospel.

One legend tells of how citizen of Patara lost his fortune, and because he could not raise dowries for his three young daughters, he was going to give them over to prostitution. After hearing this, Nicholas took a small bag of gold and threw it through the window of the man’s house on the eve of the feast of Christ’s Nativity. The eldest girl was married with it as her dowry. He performed the same gracious service for each of the other girls on each of the succeeding nights. The three purses, portrayed in art with the saint, were thought to be the origin of the pawnbroker’s symbol of three gold balls. But they were also the inspiration for Christians to begin the habit of gift giving during each of the twelve days of Christmas--from December 25 until Epiphany on January 6. In yet another legend, Nicholas saved several youngsters from certain death when he pulled them from a deep vat of vinegar brine--again, on the feast of the Nativity. Ever afterward, Christians remembered the day by giving one another the gift of large crisp pickles.

The popular cultural representation of St. Nicholas as Father Christmas or Santa Claus, though drawing on a number of such legends, was based primarily on a the Dutch custom of giving children presents--slipping fruits, nuts, and little toys into shoes or stockings drying along the warm hearthside--on his feast day, December 6. Throughout the rest of Europe during the Medieval Age, that day was marked by festively decorating homes and by a sumptuous feast that interrupted the general fasting of Advent. And in Scandanavia it was celebrated as a day of visitation, when the elders of all the remote country churches would bundle themselves in their thick furs and drive their sleighs laden with gift pastries through the snowy landscape to every home within the parish.

But perhaps more than any other sources, the advertising of soft drink manufacturer Coca Cola and the holiday cartoons of New York newspaperman Thomas Nash have profoundly shaped our perception. Coca Cola’s serving trays, signage, and print ads popularized the Nash caricature of a rotund, jolly, fur-draped, gift-laden, and unbidden visitor who pops down chimneys and distributes gifts to children all over the world. Alas, thus stripped of his pastoral function and parish proximity, Santa has become almost fairy-like in his mythic proportions.

Life Is Football

On this day in 1815, the Earl of Home led the men of Ettrick against Sir Walter Scott and his team from Yarrow in a game of football. In honor of the match, which took place at Carterhaugh in Ettrick Forest, the great Scottish poet penned two songs to inspire his team--including these words which immortalized sports in literary history:

Then strip lads, and to it, though sharp be the weather,
And if by mischance, you should happen to fall,
There are worse things in life than a tumble in the heather,
And life is itself but a game of football!

King's Meadow Newsletter

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St. Paul's

The dedication ceremony for the newly rebuilt St. Paul's Cathedral was held in London on this day in 1697. A church had stood on Ludgate Hill since the seventh century and a magnificent medieval cathedral was built there in 1087, twenty years after the Norman conquest. But this medieval cathedral was destroyed by the Great Fire that swept through London in September 1666.

The royal architect Christopher Wren was chosen to design the new cathedral--and his baroque and classical design was stunning with a main aisle of more than 150 yards and a dome soaring 366 feet above it. Construction began on June 21, 1675. Dedication ceremonies were held over twenty years later.

The church quickly became a London landmark. Many famous Britons were buried there in the years that followed, including the Duke of Wellington, Lord Nelson, and Sir Christopher Wren himself. During the Second World War, during the Nazi Blitz, the dome of St. Paul's towering through the haze was a beacon of hope and a comfort to the embattled population of London.

It remains one of the greatest architectural achievements of all time. Oh, how I love to visit it when I am in London.