| | | Christmas Eve at St. Mungo's - 24 December 2019 |
 Click on the links to hear the stories, readings, singing and videos
Our Christmas Eve celebrations began with a family service at 4.00pm, led by Joan Cape.
 Taking the title ‘Four Candles’ based on the lighting of the fourth advent candle. Joan welcomed the congregation, many families with their children, and sstarted with a prayer.
O little town of Bethlehem opened our praise before we watched an alternative interpretation of ‘four candles’, as presented by the Two Ronnie’s famous comedy sketch. (Watch the video [first 43 seconds])
Joan
took up the story of our four advent candles, and the relevance to the
Christmas story. Why were they not already lit? Joan called on one of
our junior members to light the first 'hope' candle. We heard the story
of the first hope, or prophecy candle, and sang our next praise ‘child in a manger’.
 Joan introduced us to our second video clip, ‘Unexpected Christmas’. played by Australian children (Watch the video [first 2minutes and 34 seconds]). Margaret Webster then read from Luke 2 v1-7 from the New International version, after which we sang 'Away in a manger'.
followed by the next 1m 10s of the video
We
had heard that the news of Jesus was not to be sent to kings in their
palaces, but to shepherds in the fields. Neil Cape told us the Shepherd's story, which we followed with lighting of the third candle of 'Joy'.
We sang two songs, 'It was on a starry night', as the third candle was lit, followed by the well known 'A band of angels' featuring John Hardwick. This time in video with actions for us to follow. While we were in the singing mood we continued with the Calypso Caro, 'See him lying on a bed of straw', which pulled all the parts of the story together.
 A final video 'Wrapping Paper',
the story of an old teddy bear who believes his only chance of being
loved and accepted is by wrapping himself up in wrapping paper to hide
his faults and flaws. Just like that teddy bear we may feel we need to
hide from God because of our guilt or shame. Joan tells us that even
though he knows what each one of us is like God still came to find us.
Despite our mess and sin he loved us enough to restore us and clean us.
Watch the full video
A closing prayer led us into our final carol, 'O come all ye faithful'.
Organist Graham McDonald then played a medley as we departed
Published 27 December 2019
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