Remembrances of Christmases Past

By Robin G. Jordan

I have listed some of my favorite Christmas carols, ten in all. Please take note that I have put “some” in italics. I like many, many more Christmas carols than those that I have listed.

On Christmas Night All Christians Sing
Love Came Down at Christmas
Hark! the Herald Angels Sing
Sing We Now of Christmas
The Holy and the Ivy
I Saw Three Ships
The Cherry Tree Carol
It Came upon a Midnight Clear
What Child Is This
Wexford Carol

When it comes to the celebration of Christmas I am by choice a traditionalist. I do not decorate my house for the Twelve Days of Christmas until Christmas Eve Day. The exception is the two wreathes of holly and ivy that hang in my living room year round. Each wreath is tied with a large red bow.

The holly and the ivy are artificial. I do not believe in injuring or killing living things like a holly bush or ivy plants just to decorate my house. Some folks may regard it as a conceit or eccentricism on my part but the older I become, the less concerned I am about what other people think since I have learned some folks will think the worst of you no matter what. They are apt to conclude from the flimsiest of evidence that you are a bad sort and they are not going to change their minds. They can now despise you and feel no guilt or remorse for their contempt. Jesus warned about setting ourselves up as the judge of other people and pronouncing judgment upon them but I fear that we do not pay much attention to his warning. We are of our own nature so inclined to evil that we all are prone to look around us for someone whom we can feel free to despise.

In my childhood in England the Christmas tree was shut away in the parlor, or front room. My brother and I did not see the tree until Christmas morning when the parlor door was thrown open. We seldom went into the parlor at other times. My grandfather had his upright piano in the parlor and would play Christmas carols. One of the older family members would then hand out the Christmas presents. I remember making paper chains to decorate the parlor.

As a boy I always thought that the best gifts came from my aunt, my mother’s younger sister, in the United States. She would send my brother and I things like cowboy cap pistols and holster sets and Saber jets that you shot into the air with a rubber band and which actually flew! My grandparents and mother’s gifts were more practicable—books and that sort of thing—and less memorable.

On Christmas morning my brother and I woke up to one of my mother’s nylon stockings stuffed with oranges, nuts, pencil boxes, colored pencils, pencil sharpeners, pink sugar mice, “gelt,” chocolate coins wrapped in gold tinfoil, and various small gifts or trinkets, laid at the foot of our beds.

My grandmother and mother baked a Christmas cake, a large round fruitcake iced with marzipan and decorated to look like a snow scene with miniature snowmen, silver balls, and gumdrops. Other Christmas treats to which we looked forward were sausage rolls, mincemeat pies, and jam tarts. My grandfather made his famous vinegar toffee. It was so hard it took a hammer to break it into pieces.

Christmas dinner might have been roast goose. Or roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Dessert was Christmas pudding with brandy drizzled over it and set on fire. The Christmas cake was not cut until teatime.

We observed all Twelve Days of Christmas and did not take down the tree until Twelfth Night. Only then did we remove the Christmas cards from the fireplace mantle in the parlor.

Until I moved to western Kentucky, it was my habit to attend the late night Christmas Eve Service at Christ Church in Covington, Louisiana. My mother sung in the chancel choir for well over twenty-five years. Christmas Eve was one of those rare occasions incense was used at Christ Church and then pure frankincense. The Christmas Eve service began with a solemn procession and the censing of the nave. The singing of Christmas carols preceded the service. The first year my mother and I brought my oldest grandnephew to the Christmas Eve service, he joined his grandmother in the solemn procession.

In England we would cross the dark, snow-covered common on Christmas Eve to the brightly lit village church. I do not remember the service—only the cold walk across the common and the light streaming from the church windows and the open church door. The village had an annual Christmas party for the villagers and their children and grandchildren. The village hall was decorated for the occasion. There was a pantomime and Father Christmas with a great sack filled willed with gifts. Each child was invited to reach into the sack and take a gift. Mine was a Little Grey Rabbit book. There were oranges and other treats. To this day I associate Christmas with oranges—oranges, nuts, and chocolate. Christmas was not just a family celebration. It was very much a community celebration.

The church with which I am sojourning here in western Kentucky does not have a Christmas Eve Service. In fact it does not meet over the Christmas-New Year’s break—on the two Sundays closest to Christmas and New Year’s. The university is closed. The Baptist Campus Ministry building is also closed. A large part of the congregation is out of town. Most of the students have gone home to their families for Christmas and New Year’s.

For Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and two Sundays I am churchless. In the past four years I have attended the Christmas Eve Services and Christmas Day Services of two of the Episcopal churches and one of the Continuing church in the region. The clergy of the Episcopal Dioceses of Kentucky and West Tennessee are liberal which is quite apparent from their sermons. Scruples prevent me from receiving communion in their churches. The priest of the Continuing church supplements the Communion Service of the 1928 Prayer Book with additions from the American Missal. I prefer the simpler Prayer Book services of my youth.

This time of the year I think to myself, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have an Anglican church in the region that celebrated Christmas the way I would like to see a church celebrate the season?” I think of the story that lies behind the founding of the Village Church, a Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod parish church, in Lacombe, Louisiana. A little girl and her family attended the candlelight Christmas Eve Service at another Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod parish church in the region. The parents were talking with the pastor after the service when the little girl told the pastor in her innocent childish way how wonderful the service had been and how regrettable it was that the town where she lived did not have a church that had a candlelight service on Christmas Eve. The Holy Spirit spoke to the pastor’s heart through the words of the child and he began to hold a Bible study and then services in the town where she lived.

I am then forced to ask myself, “Are there any people beside yourself who is interested in starting a new Anglican church in this part of western Kentucky?” I have not run across anyone so far. I met one woman who was driving two hours every Sunday to an Anglican church in Jackson, Tennessee. She, however, was not interested in pioneering a church closer to her home. She was happy with the church that she was attending. She had friends at the church and a place in its life. Of course, I have not made a concerted effort to see if there is any interest in the community, in part because I do not want to face the disappointment of a poor showing at a public interest meeting.

I was a member of the core group and launch team of an Anglican Mission church that was stillborn. My own efforts to interest members of my home Bible study group in starting an Anglican Mission fellowship prior to this experience had been unsuccessful. The Anglican Mission pastor who had tried to start a new church in my community did not react positively to my request for the prayers of his new church preparatory to undertaking further church planting efforts of my own. He refused point blank to pass on my request to his church, stating that I did not have the talents or gifts requisite for a church planter. In his estimation I was “a romantic dreamer.” His observations, while not ill intentioned, have had the effect of a witch’s curse. My subsequent efforts to gather the nucleus of a new congregation were cut short before they were even underway and I had an opportunity to put his appraisal of me to the test. The cost of living for a retiree skyrocketed in the area after Hurricane Katrina and I after some soul-searching moved to an area with a lower cost of living.

Other factors that make me hesitant to do anything include the self-doubt that has haunted me since then. My survey of the region suggests that it is a far from ideal location for a liturgical church, much less a traditional liturgical church. While I have good deal of experience and have acquired more than the equivalent of a seminary education through independent study, Anglicans and Episcopalians set greater store in seminary diplomas and ordination certificates. A pastor may be a complete fool but as long as he has these documents, they are going to trust him more than they do a self-taught albeit experienced layperson.

There is the problem of affiliation. While it is not impossible to operate as an independent Anglican church, it is not easy nor may it be desirable. There will be pressure within the church and even from without it to affiliate with the Anglican Church in North America, the Anglican Mission, or another jurisdiction. Developments in a number of existing Anglican ecclesiastical bodies in North America do not make them very attractive options when one considers prospective jurisdictions with which a church might affiliate.

There is also the question of call. A call has both inner and outer dimensions. An inner call is the compelling sense that that God has chosen a particular work for a Christian to undertake—for example, serve as a pastor-teacher of churches in North America, go as a missionary to a people group in a remote corner of the planet, and so on. An outer call involves the recognition of the inner call by others. The Anglican Church has historically given a particular emphasis to outer call. While a man may feel a strong compulsion to undertake a particular work, he cannot simply undertake that work. Article XXIII states:

It is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of public preaching or ministering the sacraments in the congregation, before he is lawfully called and sent to execute the same. And those we ought to judge lawfully called and sent, which are chosen and called to this work by men who have public authority given unto them in the congregation to call and send ministers into the Lord's vineyard.

His inner call must be recognized by those who have been given public authority in the congregation to call and send ministers into the Lord’s vineyard, and they must lawfully call and send him to undertake the work to which he believes himself called by God.

I have aspirations. The question, however, is whether they are God’s doing or the imaginings of my own heart, which has the Scriptures tell us is extremely deceitful. We are quite capable of misleading ourselves. Once one becomes infected with self-doubt, it also interferes with one’s ability to discern a true call. It can even blind one to that call. One comes to distrust one’s discernment not only in that particular area of one’s life but other areas too.

While sugar plums dance in the heads of small children on Christmas Eve and children’s eyes sparkle as they see the packages piled high under the tree on Christmas morning and living rooms are filled with cries of their delight, I will be wrestling with these issues as I have at Christmas time for several years now.

The merriest of Christmases and the happiest, most blessed, and most prosperous of New Years to you all. May God fill your lives with an abundance of his blessings this Christmastide and in the New Year.

Your brother in Christ and fellow journeyer in the Way,

Robin G. Jordan