Christmastide 2010

One hundred and thirty years ago this Christmas Eve, several hundred people gathered at 10 p.m. in a wooden church to welcome Christmas, as the new cathedral was not yet finished in Truro, Cornwall, England.

The idea for this service was put forward by the Reverend G H S Walpole, and the newish Bishop of Truro, the Reverend Edward White Benson, took up the idea and developed what he called "A Festal Service of Lessons and Carols." And that's exactly what it was - lessons from the Old and New Testaments and music, mainly from Handel's "Messiah."

Three years later, Benson was appointed Archbishop of Canterbury and during his thirteen year tenure spread the word about this service, and very slowly it began to find its way into other churches, even though it fell outside of the liturgical conventions of that time.

And as it does, time passed...quite a lot of time, it turned out.

In 1912, Eric Milner White, a graduate of King’s College, was appointed Chaplain of the college; when war broke out two years later, he joined the Army as a chaplain and served in France and Italy. Toward the end of the war, his unit was heavily engaged, and all the officers were either killed or wounded. The men asked Milner White to take command. He did, and by doing so, violated the role of non-combatant required of clergy in combat. He left the army - or perhaps it was the army which left him - and returned to his previous position at King’s College, and just a few months later was appointed Dean of the Chapel, a position of considerable importance.

In the autumn of the first year of his Deanship, he proposed a "new" service for Christmas Eve - its roots were in Truro, but under Milner White it was transformed; he saw it as part of a new approach to liturgy in the Church and brought three key elements from the service in Truro - a mixture of lessons read and carols sung, readers from a chorister (boy singer) to the Provost of the college (where at Truro the readers were members of the community and clergy), and the idea that the service was a gift from the college to the community. He changed some of the lessons, re-positioned some, and broadened the musical choices, with the somewhat reluctant help of the Director of Music, Dr A. H. Mann (who served at King's in that role for fifty-four years).

And then....and then, Milner White wrote the great bidding prayer; it comes early in the service and includeds these wonderful words: “Lastly, let us remember before God all those who rejoice with us, but upon another shore, and in a greater light, that multitude which no man can number, whose hope was in the Word made flesh, and with whom in the Lord Jesus we are for ever one.”

So on Christmas Eve, 1918, six weeks after the Armistice was declared on November 11th, ending World War I, a congregation gathered in King’s College Chapel, that amazing gothic stone structure begun by Henry VI and completed by Henry VIII, for the first “Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols."

One can only speculate on the feelings of those in attendance as they heard the words of the bidding prayer, mindful as they were of the great sacrifices made by all who took part in the "war to end all wars" but especially by friends - students, staff and professors at King's and all the other Cambridge colleges. Even today, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh month, the memory of all those lost in World War I is honored throughout the United Kingdom.

Nine decades later, we can participate in that same service by listening to public radio... and nine decades later, we should take time to appreciate the poignancy and meaning of that first service and perhaps find relevant links to events in our own time.

The lineage of this service from Truro to listeners around the world is a reminder that small ideas, well, thoughtfully, and sometimes accidentally nurtured, often find their way into our lives - if we lower our defenses and permit them entry. Some of them will survive and become recurring elements in the lives of a few; a smaller number will grow, change, and be meaningful to untold numbers of people in many different parts of our world.

You, faithful reader, have your own ideas about the greater good. To grow them, all one need to is, well, to begin....

In spite of the turmoil which surrounds us these days, the blessings of the season upon you....

Nick Nash