What To Expect At A Christmas Church Service

This year, why not join family or friends at a Christmas church service. In addition to be welcomed on Christmas Day, you may be wondering what to expect ...

A visitor will always be welcome at a Christmas church service. In fact, it’s probably the easiest time of the year to comfortably step into a church if you’re not a regular church goer.

For one thing, Christmas is a happy, generous time when people remember the birth of Jesus and this makes it natural for regular church-goers to greet and welcome any strangers who join them in that.

Some of those visitors will be relatives who are “home for Christmas”, or holiday makers who find themselves far from another church where they worship most Sundays. But others will be living close by with no need to enter a church during the year. No matter. Everyone’s welcome.

What’s more, many churches arrange a special program for those services. So they are easy to understand and take part in.

For instance, if there’s a short talk during the service it will invariably be about the birth of Jesus, 2000 years ago, and we can all identify with a story about a baby and the potential and promise an infant holds.

Often a Christmas church service is shorter than regular Sunday services, which also makes it easier for occasional church-goers.

Actually, you don’t even have to be a practicing Christian to be accepted and made comfortable at most Christmas church services. The season is for sharing, and this welcome extends to people from other faiths or those with only a tentative, vaguely defined faith. Christmas is inclusive.

There’s a lot more to the season than food, drink, decorations and presents. Christmas has a spiritual side, and believers with non-Christian faiths see this as clearly as regular Christian church members. So, again, everyone is welcome no matter their religious background.

People looking to add something to the spiritual side of their life frequently discover a Christmas church service is an ideal setting for that. Services at this time are usually stirring. They give us an opportunity to pause in the rush and pressure of normal, daily life and consider higher things; to take in a sense of security and certainty.

CHRISTMAS EVE CHURCH SERVICES

Christmas church services come in different styles. One common type of service in both Protestant and Catholic churches is a short gathering late in the evening on 24 December; a Christmas Eve service.

If a congregation is encouraging families to come to their Christmas Eve church service with younger children it may begin early in the evening. But it’s more common for this service to begin much later, perhaps at 11.30pm, and finish as midnight chimes and Christmas Day itself begins.

These late night Christmas Eve church services can easily become reflective times because they are held in the quiet, dark anonymity of late night, perhaps with the soft light of candles in the church, and they tend to be a little subdued with not much talking between the people in the building.

In Protestant churches these 24 December services are often a satisfying mix of singing well known Christmas carols and listening to the story of the first Christmas, when Jesus was born.

Traditionally, this reading of the Bible’s account of his birth is divided up into nine parts, or “lessons”, each read by a different member of the congregation and followed by a carol sung by everyone present. So that’s nine readings and nine carols one after the other, a pattern that’s stood the test of time.

Singing is a big part of regular church worship and special songs are brought out during Christmas services. But surprisingly these traditional Christmas hymns are also used outside churches. Many malls will have been playing them in the shopping weeks leading up to Christmas Day, so these carols will be familiar to people even if they only occasionally go inside a church.

For example you may well hear Silent Night, written 200 years ago but resonating even today with its opening verse, “Silent night. Holy night. All is calm, all is bright, ‘round ‘yon virgin mother and child. Sleep in heavenly peace.”

When the service is complete, people will exchange ‘Merry Christmas!’ with friends and quickly head home to snatch some sleep before Christmas Day gets under way and the family becomes the focus.

You will find a Christmas Eve mass organised at a Catholic church near you may start early or late. In Rome, for instance, the Pope may begin his famous, public mass at 9pm. On the other hand, some local parishes will begin their Christmas Eve mass at midnight when Christmas Day itself begins. Yet other Catholic congregations gather an hour or so earlier, much like their Protestant friends. Candles and singing will be a feature of a Catholic mass, with a homily from the priest.

A CHRISTMAS DAY CHURCH SERVICE

Just as these Christmas Eve church services are visitor-friendly and quite different from the normal Sunday routines, so are most services held on 25 December, Christmas Day itself.

These will also normally be shorter and invariably scheduled to help families get home in time to enjoy their big Christmas meal and the family time that can be particularly precious when children are scattered across the country or even working abroad.

In fact, because family is such an important feature of our Christmas Days it is not uncommon for churches, especially Protestant ones, to not arrange anything if the Day does not fall on a Sunday. So you will need to check that before you turn up on the 25th expecting Christmas church service.

But if there is one, it will be a bright, upbeat event. The theme of the day will be uplifting and special, focused on the story of Jesus’ birth, and there will be prayers and a chance to sing traditional Christmas songs.

One that might be sung begins with the line, “Hark the herald angels sing ‘Glory to the newborn king!’“ Still popular, although it was written nearly 300 years ago, it’s a carol you may very well have heard before
At the end of a Christmas church service It’s likely that there won’t be any cup of coffee or tea which are almost always provided after each service during the year. Instead it’s time to greet church friends and visitors and then go home to enjoy the rest of the day in the family traditions that make Christmas so special.