SS Nicholas & Peter ad Vincula, Curdworth

THANK YOU........... To everyone who contributed towards all of the 2025 Christmas services and events in any way.

The Ministry Team were pleased to see so many people supporting everything, but in particular the Carol Services and Crib Service. Attendances at all events were up.

Members of the Choir began singing carols on Saturday 29th November at Coppice Garden Centre and then at The Belfry on Christmas Eve. Some of them didn’t stop until Christmas Day at Grimscote Manor Hotel! Some choir members sang at all three of our Carol Services as they also belong to the Middleton Choir and, in addition, that group led singing at the Middleton Lunch Club Christmas Party.

Suffice to say, it has been a busy, but rewarding season and we all hope that however you engaged with our Christmas activities, you felt that your Christmas was the richer for having done so.

CANDLEMAS

Some of us keep our Nativity Scene/Stables out until Candlemas, which occurs forty days after Christmas, on February 2nd. It marks the presentation of Jesus in the Temple and the purification of Mary after childbirth, according to Jewish tradition. Many Christians, especially Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and some mainstream Protestant denominations, including Lutherans and Methodists, take their candles to their local church at Candlemas, where they are blessed and then used for the rest of the year. Unless there are exceptional circumstances, we no longer use candles to light our homes, but in times gone by, candles were extremely important in the home. In church, candles symbolise Christ, the light of the world and we light candles when we worship and pray to God.

Candlemas can be seen as a pivotal point where we turn away from the celebrations of Christmas towards the cross and the empty tomb. It may seem odd to be thinking this way so soon after Christmas, but Ash Wednesday falls on 18th February. Maybe it is in fact good for us to have this seemingly short space of time between the joy of Christmas and the beginning of Lent, because just as our Christian traditions are entwined with Jewish traditions and prophecies, so are the events of Jesus’ birth and his death and resurrection inextricably entwined. The signs were there at his birth. God gave his Son to save us and he keeps picking us up, however many times we fall.

Noel

SS Nicholas & Peter ad Vincula, Curdworth

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