Carol Nights

Our church is involved in two carol nights. The first one is public one led by our local Whittlesea City Council at Redleap Reserve. Our church has a presence there by way of a real live nativity and activities for kids, like paste the sheep on the Judean hills.

Last year a rain storm washed the event out. This year the weather was fine and only marginally cold. A good crowd came to share the night.

Friends, Andrew, Dave and Chris were magi for the night. Sorry we don't have a picture of the little baby Jesus, someone's newly born from the church. Lots of people were pretty excited to see a real baby with Steve and Brieley (Joseph and Mary for the night).

A week later was our church's turn to have its own carols. This year it was led by the youth group and they cast aside tradition and reworked many lyrics into new tunes or different keys. It was lighthearted and fun as the picture shows. This was no trouble for Peter but he did hear from one quarter that people were sorry there were none of the hoped for traditional carols. To be fair it was not really "carols" and more a big family sing song with songs like "Joy to the world, All the boys and girls, Joy to the people everywhere you see (instead of all the fishes in the deep blue sea), Joy to you and me."

So it was pretty out there, but as a good hearted singsong (except for the conservative minded), this is mostly what a church family comes together for at Christmas. Tradition brings in a tension here and could have been resolved better.