River side church, Oxon: detail of C17th pulpit

In a rural community, the village church is a real focus for Christmas celebration and whatever it is about the church that draws people in at this time, we should embrace it and go along with it. It is not for us to judge. We rejoice together, are heartily glad to see anyone and everyone. There is a palpable feeling of welcome but above all, of love of one’s fellow man that can come upon you in an unexpected wave like water on a beach. After services, I have come to the conclusion that it’s no good standing back and being too reticent, so I tend to go up to people I don’t know and ask outright, “and who are you?”  It’s probably easier for me as I can say, “I’m the vicar’s wife” and then rather than take offence my victim can consign me to the pile of eccentric, thorn-proof tweeded, knitting needle bearing,  chignon sporting vicar’s wives of literature and there’s no harm done. (I don’t actually have a thorn proof tweed skirt, I prefer embroidery to knitting and as yet my hair is too short for a chignon, but otherwise the cap sort of fits.)

Hill church, Oxon, detail of Annunciation window

So, it is in this spirit we approach the church services at Christmas. As carol services at the two churches were both on Sunday 23 December (4 pm and 6.30 pm), then there was Midnight Mass at one on the 24th and Holy Communion at the other on Christmas Day, the vicar did need to be well looked after, fed, watered and rested as he paced through three hectic days. I began with the best of nurturing intentions and made sure the vicar (in food, as in most things, a little and often man) had a decent tea on the Saturday as we waited for the first consignment of family to arrive for dinner (taken later than the vicar is used to). Sunday morning saw no services, so that was a help, but I was getting behind in the present-making (involving both paint and sewing machine), so nurturing schedules began to slip and it was only due to daughter no. 1 feeling that her husband and the vicar needed sausages, bacon, etc  that he was well provided for at lunchtime. In some fit of over-exuberance I found myself insisting that daughter no. 1 and husband came to both carol services (people do like to see the vicar’s family and the more distant church shouldn’t miss out). It is to their eternal credit that they came without a murmur, and even declaring the couple of miles walk would be good for them. 

Hill church, Oxon: detail of Nativity window (companion to Annunciation window)

Lit churches, seen from the outside in the dark, always make me think of looking into jewel boxes – stained glass looks at its best like this and even plain faceted glass sparkles with flickering candles beyond. Once inside, it is always a joy to see and feel a village church filling up. In our church beside the Thames, chairs are called up from sundry places, tea lights sparkle, strung out not quite evenly (but all the better for that) on the window ledges around the church like a dowager’s fine jewels put on for a special occasion. Checks are made to the ropes that anchor the splendid tree to the vicar’s pew and the greenery with amethyst and garnet  flowers are given a final tweak. A dust pan is called for and, not found, forgotten about – not many people will look at the floor tonight. The vicar gets into his togs and surprises us all  with his brocaded cope which only rarely makes an appearance. This is a wise move as even full of people this is not the warmest of churches. I see I’ve slipped into the historic present here. I rather like the effect, so I shall leave it.

River side church, Oxon: detail of Annunciation window

Both Carol Services take the 9 lessons and carols form and the Church Wardens are very good at bringing in different people each year to read the lessons – the younger, the better and what a confident lot of readers they are. Both choirs sang from the west end, behind the congregation and there was something angelic about waves of harmony of unseen origin. My husband was moved almost to tears by the first descant  he heard in our first carol service which was as beautiful as it was unexpected, climbing high and clear, a sharp tingle of sensation that made you stand a little straighter and want it not to end. Without any fuss or demands or self importance a group of people had just come together, practised and performed as naturally as if they they were finely drilled choristers. The congregation, feeling full of Christmas spirituality drifted off to the village hall down to road to sample a different sort of Christmas cheer.

River side church, Oxon: detail of east window

Meanwhile I hoped that son and daughter no.3 (plus new kitten) would arrive in time for the second carol service. We briefly hit the vicarage running to make full use of the facilities, the loos, electric kettle, microwave for mince pies, brush comb, damp cloth to remove crumbs from vicar’s front (he objected no one would notice when he had his cassock on – but I would know). And, just as we were about to leave, the other half of the family appeared, one with a kitten (expected) and the other with toothache (unexpected). Such was our good humour after the first bout of carols, the fine timing went uncommented upon, especially as it had resulted from them having been sent to pick up the only alcohol we would have over Christmas. (The vicar and I aren’t bothered about alcohol but its absence had been noticed by the advance party who declared something had to be done – and did it). That son and daughter no.3 got here at all was due entirely to the kindly ministrations of daughter no. 3’s boyfriend’s mother, who gallantly drove half way across Oxfordshire to their help after no available Oxford taxi would bring such a laden pair of passengers so far on a Sunday evening. Bless that woman – especially as I only had time to fleetingly kiss her cheek as we left on the way to Carol Service No. 2. 

Hill church, Oxon: detail of angel

So, on to the church nearby which we arrived at after all the dustpan searching, flower tweaking and candle lighting had been done. Glorious bold arrangements of white flowers and trailing greenery sat well next hurricane lamps with chunky creamy candles and to one side trestle tables stood loaded with people’s best plates piled with favourite Christmas food. Somewhere the Churchwarden’s Thermos flasks of mulled wine lurked, their constituent spirited ingredients marinating gently. In this parish, the choir was a more organised affair (not better, just different).  It included our Director of Music (yes, its rather grand that we have one), who sings with the BBC Chorus and the daughter-in-law and grandson of Harold Darke (famous for the lovely setting of ‘In the bleak mid-Winter’ almost always sung at King’s and voted ‘greatest Christmas Carol of all time’ in 2007). Another choir member, the most reliable of altos(also opera librettist/novelist and playwright), had written the words to a new carol which was being jointly and (almost) simultaneously world premiered at Dorchester Abbey and with us. (The Dorchester service started half an hour before ours, so technically the laurel goes to them.) The rest of the choir came from the angelic ranks of the caring and farming communities while the cherubim in the children’s choir came in the guise of cowboys and cowgirls for the atmospheric singing of  The Cowboy Carol (under the tutelage of the village lady taxi driver/playwright/woodworker – just the one  person, 3 jobs). Daughter no. 3 arrived a third of the way through, having settled the kitten in the kitchen.

Each church is not particularly large and with over 100 voices singing in each place you couldn’t help feeling that this is exactly what they were built for. Home exhausted to slow cooked lasagne and chocolate bread and butter pudding. Much petting of new kitten and consoling of the house cat. Bed.

Hill church, Oxon: detail of Annunciation window

Christmas Eve dawned to a sitting room of bodies, two cats circling round each other in a respectful way (it helped that they’re both girls) and the first meal of the day being brunch. The vicar had of course been up since 7am, had brought me breakfast in bed (as he does daily), mused final musings on his Christmas sermons and spent most of the morning in his study retreat. Daughter no. 2 pointed out that she too had got up early, at 6.30. Much wrapping paper was called for, and an emergency shopping trip to John Lewis in Reading was scheduled as sister no. 1 worried about the non-appearance of sister no. 3’s Christmas present. I tried to do more present making. Vicar relaxed in study with brief forays for coffee, meals and chats. In the evening we easily ate through what I thought was a very large fish pie (with shell fish, lime, ginger and vermouth – v. good), finished off the bread and butter pudding, which by now had had a garnish of cooked marzipan, and talked around the table before we set off for Midnight Mass, as and when individuals were ready (the vicar having departed in well in advance). It’s a dark walk to the church, so I carried a hideous battery operated lantern with a searing blue light but at least I felt sure that I wouldn’t  be run over by the smart Porsches and  Aston Martins that tear along the road, taking a short cut through the woods.

Hill church, Oxon: Annunciation and Nativity windows

 Both the churches are pre-Reformation in origin, going back to the C13 and in his Christmas Sermons, the vicar asked us to think of the many people who have worshipped in the churches in times very different from today and how this historical thread is felt in the breadth and richness of today’s Anglican Church. The altar would have moved back and forth over the centuries and it would have either been of simple appearance or much more  elaborate with covers of gold thread and embroidered decoration. Holy Communion would have varied from occurring regularly to rarely (perhaps only twice a year) and it would have been carried out under various different names. Most of us have forgotten the  importance of the Parish Clerk. A paid position, he would have led the parish in the service, in saying the canticles, in hymn singing, indeed in most things apart from giving the Sermon and the Ministration of the Sacrament, which the priest alone did. For 200-300 years the Parish Clerk was probably the most important person in the village, his power only waning in the middle of the C19th under a two-pronged attack of changes. The influence and counter influence of the Oxford Movement began to erode his importance but it was the seeding of local government and the concomitant legislation which pulled the rug from under his seat. Having said that, the odd Parish Clerk eked out a living in remote rural parishes into the mid C20th. My husband remembers his father, also an Anglican priest, becoming vicar of a Suffolk parish (Wetheringsett cum Brockford with Thwaite and Stoke Ash) in 1957 and the Parish Clerk was a fixture there until he died in the 1960s. This particular clerk had also  taken on responsibility for the ringing of the bells, which for special occasions when 4 were needed, he had devised a method whereby he was strapped into his chair and rang two with his feet and two with his hands. My husband thinks this may not have been because there were no other bell ringers, but rather that the clerk’s somewhat intimidating manner was meant to discourage others. 

The Christmas sermon then raised our thoughts to the church gallery. This was possible in our hill top church as there is a lovely stone gallery across the west end of the church, although it is now occupied by the C19th organ. In our church down by the Thames, we had to do this in our minds as at the west end there is now a simple contemporary wood and glass partition which screens off the vestry.  But it was usually at this west end, whether above or below that the village band would gather and few of us that have seen the 1967 film Far from the Madding Crowd will have forgotten the village band  shown there. Spot on in country parishes, the vicar  enthused, with an added request that someone from each parish should take up one of his favourite instruments, the serpent.  A reproduction of a C19th print handed out with the Order of Service reinforced this image. Here the Parish Clerk directed things from his desk in the the gallery while around him was jumble of musicians and singers (one of whom is still in his country smock) – not really very unlike our own motley unrobed choirs. And I think that’s the point, you have to work with the clay you have – if we had a serpent in the village, I’m sure we’d find a use for it.

As the drama of the liturgy moved on to the spiritual highlight of the service – the Eucharist or Holy Communion – attention moved from the secular part of the building to the holy part, focussing on the altar. Freshly cleaned and glowing the parishes’ silver had been augmented by the additional chalices and patterns collected from Oxford Cathedral’s safe (with only the briefest worry on the Cathedral’s part as to whether they could find it). Both these sets dated from the early C18 and had been given by local families to replace silver lost in more iconoclastic times. Thoughts not only went back to that Christmas 2,000 years ago but also to those later Christmases since C13 celebrated in our churches by people long gone and unknown to us. Moving towards the highest point in the liturgy,  the vicar set out the church’s best linen and silver , as you would for honoured guests, and offered the meal of bread and wine to all who had come to the service, urging that all should receive it, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Non-Conformist, atheist, agnostic or believer, baptised or not baptised, confirmed or not confirmed, regular church goer or not, ‘worthy’ or ‘unworthy’. All were to come up together to share in the common meal offered without condition in an act of celebration, renewal of  hope and love. 

INTERESTING STATISTICS

Riverside parish: Population c. 200

Christingle 16 December: 24 (12 children : 12 adults)

Carol Service 23 December (4 pm): 105 plus, adults & children (Church Wardens gave up counting) 

Christmas Day Holy Communion: 44 (34 adults : 10 children)

Hill Parish: Population 332 (2001 census)

Carol Service 23 December (6.30 pm): 120 ish (including c. 25 children)

Midnight Mass: 34 adults

River side church, Oxon: detail of C17th pulpit

Postscript: The kindest of dentists answered her phone on Christmas Day and saw the poor son afflicted with toothache on Thursday 27 December. That we had confidence he would be seen on Thursday helped him to cope with the intermittent pain and enabled us to all enjoy Christmas.