Lyrics:

Good people all, this Christmas time
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done
In sending his beloved son
With Mary holy we should pray
To God with love this Christmas Day
In Bethlehem upon that morn
There was a blessed Messiah born
Near Bethlehem did shepherds keep
Their flocks of lambs and feeding sheep
To whom God’s angels did appear
Which put the shepherds in great fear
‘Prepare and go, ‘ the angels said
‘To Bethlehem, be not afraid
For there you’ll find, this happy morn
A princely babe, sweet Jesus born
With thankful heart and joyful mind
The shepherds went, this babe to find
And as God’s angel had foretold
They did our saviour Christ behold
Within a manger he was laid
And by his side the virgin maid
Attending on the Lord of life
Who came on earth to end all strife
Good people all, this Christmas time
Consider well and bear in mind
What our good God for us has done
In sending his beloved Son
With Mary holy we should pray
To God with love this Christmas day
In Bethlehem upon that morn
There was a blessed Messiah born

We pray thee, O Lord, to purify our hearts that they may be worthy to become thy dwelling place. Let us never fail to find room for thee, but come and abide in us that we also may abide in thee, who as at this time wast born into the world for us, and dost live and reign, King of kings and Lord of lords, now and for evermore.

–-William Temple

4. Nativity at Night by Geertgen tot Sint Jans (c 1490)

Credit: Wikimedia CC BY-SA 4.0 pic.twitter.com/ijcdvlB2LZ

— CultureHubOnX (@CultureHubOnX) December 21, 2023

Men overlooked a baby’s birth
When love unnoticed came to earth
And later, seeking in the skies,
Passed by a man in workman’s guise.
And only children paused to stare
While God Incarnate made a chair.

–Mary Tatlow

Happy Christmas! Luke 2:10-11 'Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.' MS 5204 f. 65v. pic.twitter.com/AZ8h1jteRj

— LambethPalaceLibrary (@lampallib) December 24, 2023

ALMYGHTYE God, whiche haste geuen us thy onlye begotten sonne to take our nature upon hym, and this daye to bee borne of a pure Vyrgyn; Graunte that we beyng regenerate, and made thy children by adoption and grace, maye dailye be renued by thy holy spirite, through the same our Lorde Jesus Christe who lyueth and reygneth &c.

The story of Christmas, told through masterpieces of painting – a thread 🧵

1. The Cestello Annunciation – Sandro Botticelli (1489) pic.twitter.com/vTRwhlbZzz

— Culture Critic (@Culture_Crit) December 24, 2023

We are going to take a break from the Anglican, Religious, Financial, Cultural, and other news until later in the Christmas season to focus from this evening forward on the great miracle of the Incarnation–KSH.

Happy Christmas Eve! Here is the Nativity scene from St Phillip's cathedral, Birmingham, looking extra festive with attendant Christmas tree #StainedGlassSunday pic.twitter.com/I1ir3Lk8Kf

— Dr Naomi (@BooksTeaFilms) December 24, 2023

As a Christian, my faith is anchored in the person of Jesus, who won my heart long ago. It would be impossible to understand me without taking that into account. But sometimes my faith dims; God seems distant, his ways confounding. “Faith steals upon you like dew,” the poet Christian Wiman has written. “Some days you wake and it is there. And like dew, it gets burned off in the rising sun of anxiety, ambitions, distractions.” And the rising sun of grief and loss, too. Those things don’t necessarily destroy faith; in some cases, for some people, they can even deepen it. But they always change it.

During times of sorrow and times of tears, when it feels like we’re “being broken on the wheels of living,” in the words of Thornton Wilder, there is great comfort in believing God empathizes with our suffering, having entered into suffering himself. But we also need his emissaries. We need people who see us and know us, who enter our stories. Through their compassion and love, we feel, I feel — even if only partly — God’s compassion and love. That doesn’t eliminate the storms from within or without. But it makes greater room for joy in the journey.

Read it all.

Compassion, on the other hand, is central to the Christian understanding of God. https://t.co/yFBPzcsHvk

— Mike Jopek (@mikejopek) December 24, 2023

This section of the poem offers two images of Mary, each extraordinary in its own way. Elsewhere among the Advent Lyrics, Mary is the subject of ‘O virgo virginum’ and of the dialogue which begins ‘O Joseph’; the latter brings to life the tension and pain in the story of her child-bearing, dramatising the anguished thoughts of a couple who have had a world-changing miracle erupt in the middle of their marriage. That’s an emotional, intimate conversation – the Incarnation as personal human drama.

This poem gives us a very different view of Mary. Here she is a queen, and on a cosmic scale – ruler of the forces of heaven, earth, and hell. God and Mary are described in language and tropes drawn from Anglo-Saxon heroic poetry: they are the brytta and his bryd, the generous ring-giving lord and his resolute queen. Described thus, they might easily be Hrothgar and Wealhtheow in Beowulf, or even Cnut and Emma. Like many another woman in Anglo-Saxon poetry, Mary is a bride ‘adorned with rings’ (beaga hroden), but this bride is far from a passive figure: she is courageous and determined (þristhycgende, ‘steadfast in mind’). This poem frames her situation in a distinctive way, presenting it as if she has decided to undertake a diplomatic mission from earth to heaven. Though literally this decision is made when she accepts Gabriel’s message to her, the poem describes it as if she set out to travel on a journey to unite herself with God…

Read it all.

'You are the door in the wall…
Intercede for us now, bold in your words,
that he may not allow us any longer
to go astray in this deadly valley.'

An Anglo-Saxon Advent poem to Mary, queen of three realms and door in the wall between the worlds https://t.co/kg1YIeygui pic.twitter.com/8I0uwMSaOQ

— Eleanor Parker (@ClerkofOxford) December 24, 2023

For all 4 Advent and Christmas Eve services throughout the diocese today.

Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and as we are sorely hindered by our sins from running the race that is set before us, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

Morning everyone hope you are well. It's wet and murky in the Lakes, which is typical for this time of the year. Still beautiful in its own way. The old miners cottages at Coniston Coppermines leading to Coniston Old Man. Have a great day. #LakeDistrict @keswickbootco pic.twitter.com/55LWfPDqaR

— Rod Hutchinson (@lakesrhino) December 24, 2023

And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth; she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, in which to be nourished for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.

–Revelation 12:1-6

Ladybird Artists Advent Calendar, the last window.
‘Winter Pastoral’
Artist: SR Badmin pic.twitter.com/14IsxIlsOo

— Helen Day (@LBFlyawayhome) December 24, 2023