We are going to collect together some of the services, messages and links available this Christmas, and please let us know of any others in the comments.
Christmas Services
+ Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge
+ Service Booklet
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
Christmas Day:
+ Christmas Morning Service from Portsmouth Cathedral
+ Lessons and Carols from Exeter Cathedral
+ Queen’s Christmas Message and Video
Christmas Eve:
a href=”http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04vf8dt”>+ Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge
+ Service Booklet
+ Christmas Eve Service from Holy Cross Anglican Church, Loganville, GA
Also Available:
+ Sussex Carol [arr Ledger] from the Choirs of the Cathedral Church of St Luke and St Paul in Charleston
+ Christmas Carols from St John’s College, Cambridge
+ Handel’s Messiah from the Temple Church
A word from Scrooge: Miming and sound not synchonised to mouth movements. Too much levity. Bah, humbug.
For those of you old enough to remember Chariots of Fire the quad glimpsed occasionally is the one the two lads raced around trying to beat the chiming college clock. Also at 0.52/0.53, you catch a glimpse on the right of the old Divinity Faculty (now replaced elsewhere by a state of the art, alas, building). It’s the red brick building just past the green.
Hmmm it would have been more helpful if I had said just past the stacked bikes (the green is largely hidden by the bikes).
Apologies for a third comment for those of you across the water who might not be familiar with the storied colleges. This is Trinity College, Cambridge. Not Oxford.
Is it lack of synchronisation or teeth chattering in the cold? Too much levity? Tsk tsk, well, you can’t accuse the Vatican of that, but over here – guilty as charged.
It is 25th December over here now. Happy Christmas Father Tee and Merry Christmas to all.
#1 Fr Tee
Thinking about it, I recollect that although Trinity was the location of the great court run, due to some dissatisfaction about the portrayal by Gielgud and Lindsay Anderson [“If”] of the Masters of Trinity and Caius, the run was actually filmed at Eton which is fairly similar….I say, revealing that I am old enough to remember Chariots of Fire!
How much basis in fact there is to the story of the Abrahams run, I have no idea.
It certainly is true, though, that Eric Liddell was a serious-minded and generous-spirited Christian who became a missionary in China. He died there in Feb 1945 of a brain tumour in a Japanese internment camp. (Footnote to history: the future American theologian Langdom Gilkey was also a prisoner in the same camp.)
#6 A number of years ago I heard from someone recently returned from Hong Kong and China that Liddell was still remembered in China, and I suppose we are now seeing the results of the good work laid down by him and others before the bamboo curtain descended. The stories include that he mentored some of the youngsters in the internment camp and when offered the chance to get out in a prisoner exchange, gave up his place to a pregnant lady.
Many of those called to mission in China assumed that it was unlikely that they would return, even in the early 20th Century.
It is fun to see a lot of the stylistic conceits of the 1950s being revived, especially by such young sunny faces!