 Our little sheep with the angels
 friendly camel
 some of our audience, socially distanced and wearing masks.
Puppets help tell the story
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| | | Hope4Penicuik Carol Event - 3 December 2021 |
Penicuik Silver Band lead the praise music
Friday
December 3rd. The church warm and brightly lit. Members of the Silver
Band arriving one by one, full of excitement…….their
first indoor engagement since before Covid struck! Sheila and the
puppets all ready to go!
Once again, we couldn’t be in
the Town Hall, and St Mungo’s generously opened its doors for
this community event….but who would come? A new variant of
Covid, masks to be worn….plenty of reasons not to come to a
strange place. But come they did: people from a variety of
churches and from none, and of all ages from the elderly to children,
even a baby in his pram.
Always look on the bright side of
life was a somewhat surprising opening song, but it certainly got
everyone (rather tentatively) clapping along to the music. There was
even some very restrained dancing in the pews! Camilla Camel soon
managed to explain to Joan just what it all had to do with Christmas:
an expression of hope in the face of all the things that get us down.
The
audience were asked what things they were hoping for this Christmas;
one of the suggestions was an Advent Calendar – something which
fills us not just with hope, but with expectation. And so to our first
two carols, led by the band: Ding dong merrily on high followed
by Joy to the world.
 Next,
a rather grumpy donkey joined us – he accepted (grudgingly) that
there was some debate as to whether he was actually part of the
Christmas story, something which was mentioned in our first reading
about the journey to Bethlehem, but he cheered up as we sang the next
song, Little Donkey.
This was followed by O little town of
Bethlehem, once again with the band. The next part of the story told of
the birth of the baby Jesus: what else could we sing but Away in a
manger?
To our surprise, a sheep then popped up – he
reminded Joan that he, or at least, the shepherds who looked after him,
was also part of the story. The reading about the appearance of the
angels to the shepherds came next, and before we sang our next carols,
Still the night and Angels from the realms of glory, we had another
look at the words the angels sang to the shepherds, learning how to
“say” them using sign language as an aid to remembering
them.
 When
our friendly camel appeared again, we remembered, with the help of our
final reading, the wise men who, even though they came along rather
later, also played their part in the story. An action song On that very
first Christmas, led (on video) by the children of Christchurch,
Cambridge, then helped us to remember all of the characters we had
talked about.
Before we finished, we considered what we’d
heard. Mary and Joseph: they did get married, they did find a place to
have the baby even though not where they expected, and he turned out to
be much more important than they had ever understood. The
shepherds: they weren’t freed up from the Romans by a great
military leader, but they got something quite unexpected – they
were the important people who first heard about the special baby who
would be their Messiah. And the kings – well, they found the
baby: not the sort of king they had thought they were coming to find,
but someone who’d turn out to be much greater than anyone could
have imagined. None of them got exactly what they were hoping
for, or expecting. But what they got turned out to be something much
greater, and much better. For that little child was Jesus, God’s
son, who came to give us all Hope.
After a short prayer, we finished with two old favourites: Hark the herald angels sing and O come all ye faithful.
It’s
so important to remember, as we open the Advent doors, and light the
candles, the reason we celebrate Christmas isn’t because of the
parties, the Christmas dinner, the holidays and so on. We are
celebrating the birth, and the birthday, of that baby Jesus, who came
to give us the gifts of hope, and love, and joy and peace – the
things each of the Advent candles signifies, things which make a real
difference in each of our lives, and the lives of those around us.
Without that baby Jesus, there wouldn’t be any Christmas to
celebrate. And as we know from the Bible, that’s only the
beginning of the story.
The evening was
led by Joan Cape, with the help of Sheila Anderson and the puppets,
Penicuik Silver Band, Bill and Margaret Webster, and Neil Cape.
The
team wish everyone a very merry Christmas and look forward to welcoming
you to Messy Church new year season in 2022.
For all the Christmas 2021 events click HERE
Published 9 December 2021
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