Opinion
Ding dong merrily…it’s August!
Regular contributor Ian Boughton urges us to start thinking about the content of our Christmas services at church.
If you have not yet thought about Christmas, you may be too late…
Don’t worry, I am not talking about the commercial side of it, though that has already begun – social media has reported some supermarkets putting their seasonal stock on display in July, heaven help us. And I see that we already have reports of certain brands proudly announcing that such-and-such a ‘celebrity’, of whom I have never heard, will be starring in their extremely expensive Christmas TV ads. (Oh dear…!)
No, I am talking about the preparation of seasonal services in church. Every year at about this time, I enquire whether my church friends have thought about their Christmas content, and my queries are always dismissed – oh, they’ll think about it nearer the time. Which, I suspect, is why I find some Christmas services truly awful… after one chaotic, ill-rehearsed and completely embarrassing such event, my dear wife and son absolutely refused to ever attend another!
Now think about how the professionals approach the season: Recording artistes and visual media have their work well in hand by August. I once went to see the late Johnny Cash record his Christmas special… in July, I think. Slade recorded their Christmas epic in the middle of a New York heatwave – they used the studio hallways for echo, and the Americans were apparently quite baffled by Noddy Holder running down the corridors screaming “it’s Chriiiiistmas!!!!!” And Roy Wood recorded the other biggie, ‘I wish it could be Christmas every day’, in August – the recording engineer hung decorations in the studio to create the right atmosphere.
I worked with some actors recording an album of seasonal songs and stories in summer… it was so hot that we had a fan running, which meant all the recordings had an electric hum on them, and we had to do it all over again. But the principle is the same – by well before Christmas, it was ready.
So, what are you going to do? Dig out your seasonal carols and things in the second week of December? Are you going to assume that your worship band will be able to trudge through the same music they do every year? Do you assume that those who give your readings will be able to put them across well, even though you give them no guidance, preparation time, or rehearsal? (I still cringe at the memory of a recent visit to church, when a young chap of maybe ten or eleven was pushed up to the front to give a Bible reading, and made a colossal hash of it. Certainly, it’s great to be ‘inclusive’, but you must prepare, rehearse and guide people if they are going to appear in public.)
An experienced Christian musician once remarked to me that as every member of the general public now has a thousand professionally-produced pieces of entertainment instantly at their command through computers, phones, and smart TV’s, many will simply no longer accept sub-standard presentation in church. He said, cuttingly: “the old excuse of putting up with it ‘because they’re doing it for the church’ just doesn’t work any more.”
And of course, your Christmas season is the time when visitors are most likely to come to your church. So – now is the time to nudge your teams, and say “if you have some creative ideas for Christmas readings, songs, poems or stories, I’ll be glad to hear them right now, thank you.”
Or do you really think that if you leave your planning until mid-winter, your Christmas services are going to be ‘alright on the night’?
Image, top, by Frauke Riether from Pixabay.
Ian Boughton is a musician and author and retired journalist who lives in Dilham in Norfolk.
The views carried here are those of the author, not of Network Norfolk, and are intended to stimulate constructive and good-natured debate between website users.
We welcome your thoughts and comments, posted below, upon the ideas expressed here.
Click here to read our forum and comment posting guidelines