There will not be a 10:30am service on Christmas Eve. Please join us for one or both of the evening services.
At 5PM, First Parish celebrates our annual Christmas Eve service with story and song and candles of joy. Come and sing your favorite carols, listen to Rev. Anne’s Christmas message, and enjoy a story by Leo Tolstoy. Special music will be by the Children’s and Youth Choirs.
Youth and children singers and instrumentalists will provide the seasonal music for worship. The children’s choir will sing Rip Jackson’s arrangement of “The Little Drummer Boy” with percussion by Amy Kvaal and Jordan, McKenna and Regie O’Hare Gibson. The teen choir will sing Harry Simeone’s joyful “Do You Hear What I Hear?” with Aidan Dwyer, contrabass and Regie O’Hare Gibson, percussion. Boy soprano McKenna O’Hare Gibson will sing the lovely Christmas Carol “What Child is This?” For the centering music, bass clarinettist Jordan O’Hare Gibson will play a jazz arrangement of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” And for the postlude, Rip Jackson will play Vince Guaraldi’s “Skating (from A Charlie Brown Christmas) with Aidan Dwyer, contrabass and Pieter Svensen, percussion. The congregation will sing beloved Christmas carols during the service.
At 7PM, bask in the beauty of our sanctuary on this Holy Night, as the Adult Choir sings music of the season. Rev. Anne will consider how the ancient message of the birth of the Holy Child still has meaning for us today. The evening will end with carols on the front steps of the church, as we serenade the Green with our favorite song: “Oh Little Town of Lexington”
The sanctuary choir will sing Z. Randall Stroope’s moving a capella anthem “On this Night My Heart Rejoices” and John Rutter’s ethereal “What Sweeter Music.” French horn player Erik Svenson will play “Noels for horn and piano” arranged by Bernard Dewagtere. Elizabeth Walsh and Julia Jaffe will sing Adolphe Adam’s lovely duet “O Holy Night.” Rip Jackson, David Meharry and Jamie Willis will sing the the Cornwall Christmas trio “The Holly She Bears a Berry.” The congregation will sing beloved Christmas carols during the service and on the front steps afterwards.
Click here for last week’s sermon by Rev. Anne Mason, “Will Hope, like Light, Return?”