Lessons & Carols

455 Arborway,Boston MA 02130

18 December, 2021

Description

Join City on a Hill Church for a modern look at the traditional English Service of Nine Lessons and Carols by local musicians. All are welcome to this service of Scripture readings followed by Christmas music based on the original service first held in 1918. Lessons & Carols will be a modern look at a traditional service, embodying the hope of Christmas. Notes for Attending: - All attendees must wear a mask (2 years and older) and practice social distancing - In order to ensure social distancing, we are asking all attendees to pre-register for a ticket. Admission is FREE. A History of Lessons & Carols: Our Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols was first held on Christmas Eve 1918. It was planned by Eric Milner-White, who at the age of thirty-four had just been appointed Dean of King’s after experience as an army chaplain which had convinced him that the Church of England needed more imaginative worship. The music was then directed by Arthur Henry Mann, Organist 1876–1929. The original service was, in fact, adapted from an Order drawn up by E.W. Benson, later Archbishop of Canterbury, for use in the wooden shed, which then served as his cathedral in Truro, at 10 pm on Christmas Eve 1880. AC Benson recalled: ‘My father arranged from ancient sources a little service for Christmas Eve – nine carols and nine tiny lessons, which were read by various officers of the Church, beginning with a chorister, and ending, through the different grades, with the Bishop. Almost immediately other churches adapted the service for their own use. A wider frame began to grow when the service was first broadcast in 1928 and, with the exception of 1930, it has been broadcast annually, even during the Second World War, when the ancient glass (and also all heat) had been removed from the Chapel and the name of King’s could not be broadcast for security reasons. In these and other ways the service has become public property. From time to time the College receives copies of services held, for example, in the West Indies or the Far East and these show how widely the tradition has spread. The broadcasts, too, have become part of Christmas for many far from Cambridge. One correspondent writes that he heard the service in a tent on the foothills of Everest; another, in the desert. Wherever the service is heard and however it is adapted, whether the music is provided by choir or congregation, the pattern and strength of the service, as Dean Milner-White pointed out, derive from the lessons and not the music. ‘The main theme is the development of the loving purposes of God ...’ seen ‘through the windows and words of the Bible’. The center of the service is still found by those who ‘go in heart and mind’ and who consent to follow where the story leads.