My Christmas traditions
Yesterday evening I went to a live performance of Handel’s Messiah at the Royal Festival Hall on the Southbank. It was great.
Going to a performance of Handel’s Messiah has become something I often do for Advent (i.e. the leadup to Christmas Day, and also what many people now just call Christmas). I think this is the second time in maybe 10 years I’ve been to the Royal Festival Hall for it. Recently I've mostly gone to performances that a friend of mine sang in, including a well-intended, somewhat ambitious, but less-than-ideal performance in a pub last year. (Randomly, I don’t know why but one of my favourite choruses in The Messiah is He trusted in God that he would deliver him.)
Going to that made me think I should write about things I often do for Advent and Christmas – so Christmas traditions of a sort.
Carols
For the last ten years or so, almost every year except the first pandemic year or two, I’ve gone to the HTB or KXC carols services (or both!). Of HTB’s carols services, I’ve only ever gone to their carols by candlelight service at HTB Brompton Road, which is a traditional carols service with an orchestra and choir. I began going to that with a friend who went to HTB, and I've continued since she left London. It’s also been a favourite of visiting family and friends of mine.
KXC is my own church, and I’ve only been to their contemporary carols service – which mostly features the same carols as HTB’s but in a more contemporary Christian style (mostly rock but also some gospel). KXC also does a traditional carols service but that’s usually so close to Christmas Day that I’m already in St Vincent. Plus it’s great to hear the seasonal favourites in those two very different forms. This tends to be less to the taste of friends I take, I suspect because their expectations are closer to the traditional style.
This year I couldn’t make HTB’s carols, but for the first time tomorrow I’ll make Hillsong’s at the Dominion Theatre. I’m really looking forward to that! Maybe next year I'll also try something outside of those two, maybe at St Paul’s or at All Soul’s Langham Place.
London Friends
December’s also a great time for me to see friends. A few of my main London friend groups often use it as a chance to meet for lunch or dinner, and the carols services are often something different to do with them.
Home home
I think I’ve been in St Vincent for all but 3 Christmases of my life (one in undergrad, one my first year working in London, and one when my family went to see my sister in Georgia instead). I love going home for Christmas: the weather (🌞😎), the food (black cake! 😋), the music (carols and parang), and of course the friends and family. Many of my childhood friends either live in St Vincent or go home to see their own families for Christmas, so it's often a great chance to see them. With them it's increasingly just catching up and overdosing on nostalgia, though we occasionally float doing more, which I definitely need to be more intentional about.
And of course it's a great chance to see my own family, both those who live in St Vincent and those who come home for Christmas. These days the period's generally very slow and relaxed, consisting mostly of helping around the home, getting and making Christmas food, visiting family, maybe going for a Christmas drive or two, watching tv, and thinking about the year that's gone and the year to come.
New Year’s
After an absolute anti-climax of a New Year for the year 2016 (maybe I'll write about that another time), I try to keep my New Year's day simple. I often fly back to London just before New Year's and try to do something small or targeted with friends: maybe ringing it in at a friend's place after dinner and with conversation and boardgames, or recently travelling with a few friends but avoiding grand plans.
And then it's back to work in the first or second week of January, hopefully refreshed from by all of the above.
