Blue Christmas

Tonight at Hope UCC I took part in a Blue Christmas service, put together by the wonderful Sarah Frederiksen McCann, pastor at Hope, and me. We basically cribbed the service from the Diocese of Ottowa, Canada. You can see their liturgy here. If you go to this link and scroll down, you find a ritual for individuals, in case you were not able or chose not to attend the service for whatever reason. The attendance was modest, at best, but those who were there were grateful for the acknowledgement that Christmas can be a time of struggle for many. We think we will do it again. The culture is so relentlessly cheerful, the emphasis is all on children and joy and family and for those who are grieving or alone or unable to take part in the frenzy of giving by reason of unemployment or other issues, it is a painful time. These are the people whom the liturgy tries to recognize, acknowledging their reality and God's presence with them in that reality. It was not the best attended service we've ever held, but it was full of potential for next year. More advertizing, a little work on the liturgy which was not always as felicitous as it could have been, a little fine tuing of the music (the selections are from the hymnal of the Anglican Church of Canada (which I have never seen) and we were in a UCC church using two different hymnals whose verse numbers etc. were quite a bit different from our hymnal. Kim Jungermann, a member of St Mark's, served as our musician, since the regular musicians of both of our congregations were too occupied by Christmas Eve planning to add another thing to their calendars.