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Good Morning

As part of my preparation for Christmas this year I went to Northern France to visit some of the First World War military cemeteries. It was in the late July heatwave that I walked up and down the countless rows looking for the grave of a young officer called Gerald Fitzgerald, who had been a very close friend of my predecessor, Eric Milner-White.

The two were at school together, and as students they shared rooms in College. Afterwards Fitzgerald was called to the Bar and Milner-White was ordained. Then war broke out. Fitzgerald joined up and was killed in action in December 1915. Milner-White volunteered as an army chaplain. He carried stretchers, comforted the dying and prayed for the dead.

As Dean of King’s when the war ended, Milner-White decided to replace the normal Christmas Eve service with something a bit more exciting. So he adapted an idea had been developed in Truro, changing a few of the readings and most significantly, writing a special bidding prayer.

This year we celebrate the centenary of that first Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at King’s, and as we have prepared I have often wondered what the atmosphere would have been like in the full, hushed and candlelit Chapel in 1918. As well as the members of College, dressed, like the choir, in white surplices, there would have been many people in uniform, as well as those wearing bandages or on crutches. Just about everyone present would have been keenly aware of the loss of a friend or a son or a brother. That’s why the Dean invited the congregation to remember not only 'the babe lying in the manger' but also all those 'who rejoice with us but upon another shore and in a greater light'. Tears would have been in many eyes as they did so. Including his.

No one at King’s in 1918 imagined that A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols would be one day be broadcast, never mind become the touchstone of the beginning of Christmas that it has become for many across the world today. As we celebrate its centenary I am more than ever conscious that it has its origins in the attempt to make a meaningful response to the tragedy of war and the pain of bereavement.

This is deeply fitting, for the faith proclaimed at Christmas is that the word become flesh and dwelt among us; that, in Christ, God almighty shared and blessed the vulnerability of the human condition. It is this faith that makes the tear in the eye of the believer today a tear not only of sadness but of hope, and not only of hope but of joy.

Life is often extremely difficult. But Christmas can always be joyful, even when there are tears – as there often are.

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