Christmas Eve reunion

A comfortable quiet night in our hotel room, getting up slowly after a lie-in, then a message from Kath to say the coffee was on and breakfast would be ready whenever we arrived. The sun was shining and the sky clear as we made the twenty minute walk to Albion Street for a bowl of muesli and a pile of toast. To our surprise Rhiannon surfaced earlier than expected after a night out arriving home at four in the morning.

Anto arrived from a sortie to fetch the turkey from Waitrose. Freshly brewed expresso coffee was drunk by all from a newly acquired Italian mini expresso machine, complete with milk frothing appendage. Having already drunk two generous black Americanos with breakfast, I abstained. Inevitably, we had a late light lunch.

Then I walked up to St Nicholas Parish Church to see if it was open, and found it was not only open but full of parents and children taking part in a Nativity tableau, with a narration in rhyming couplets from some who I imagine was a Sunday School teacher. Ten years ago, we arrived a few days before Christmas to attend Rhiannon's Church school Nativity play in this church, so this brief moment evoked happy memories of her childhood. 

It was wonderful to see so many people attending this parish event in numbers comparable the pre-covid Christmasses. Just like back at home in Canton. It doesn't amount to a religious revival, but it is a sign that tradition is valued and held on to with tenacity when it is possible to express it once more. 

I remember a few years back photos of Syrian Orthodox Christians in Irbil, whose city had been overwhelmed by ISIS, its institutions and sanctuaries destroyed, in the days after the city had been liberated, gathering to worship in a burned out church. And the same in a bombed Catholic church in Aleppo when it was besieged. Hope and defiance expressed in reclaiming sacred places defiled by war. 

Nothing like that has happened to church members in Britain, but covid precautions closed down churches and other places of worship dispossessing millions of their freedom to worship. Despite the apparent loss of numbers attending church, or the slow return to worship of significant numbers, churches maintain their invitation to the whole community. Slowly people are realising what they've been missing, and find the church doors are still held open for them, the same old welcome still extended to them.

I stayed in church just a few minutes and then returned to rendezvous with Kath to drive to Digbeth Coach station to collect Owain from one arriving at four o'clock. We were back in Kenilworth by five, and while we were out Anto's sister Viv arrived. Then we walked to the 'Abbey Fields' pub for a drink before supper. Kath cooked us a splendid pasta dish, washed down with wines from France, Italy and Switzerland, followed by a selection of cheeses and  mince pies. We sat around the table and talked until ten, when Clare did her daily osteoporosis injection. Then we walked back to the hotel together. I wanted to walk up to the Parish Church for Midnight Mass, but found I was just too tired to enjoy the effort. There are three services tomorrow. We'll get to one of them, for sure.