Even war could not forestall this annual Christmas gift to the world

National Post, 24 December 2019

Even war could not forestall this annual Christmas gift to the world.

My first thoughts about Christmas Eve this year came four weeks ago, when I heard that Sir Stephen Cleobury, choirmaster and director of music at King’s College, Cambridge, had died on the feast day of St. Cecilia, patron saint of music, on Nov. 22. Only two months earlier he had retired after 37 years due to illness.

On Christmas Eve in Cambridge, the choir of King’s College leads the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. The magnificence of the chapel itself, the setting for the finest of the English choral tradition of sacred music, makes the annual service one of the great cultural achievements of Christian Europe. Christmas Eve at King’s holds a high place in the cultural patrimony of the entire English-speaking peoples.

The first Lessons and Carols was in 1918, and Cleobury conducted more than a third of them, his last being the centennial anniversary a year ago. The original service, blending the biblical stories of Christ’s coming at Bethlehem with traditional Christmas carols, was conceived as a moment of unity and peace after the horrors of the Great War, only six weeks concluded at Christmas 1918.

The service resonated and became an annual affair. In 1928 the BBC began broadcasting it on radio. During the Second World War, with the towering stained glass removed for safekeeping and without any heat, the service continued. The only modification is that the radio broadcast did not identify King’s as the site, for ostensible security reasons. But where else could it possibly be held?

Broadcast on the BBC World Service on Christmas Eve, 100 million people around the world listen to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols. The TV version — called Carols from King’s — gets more than two million viewers in the U.K. For many, Christmas begins a few minutes after 3 p.m., when a single chorister — selected by the choirmaster just minutes before the service — sings as a solo the first lines of Once in David’s Royal City, always the opening hymn.

Continue reading at the National Post:
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/raymond-de-souza-even-war-could-not-forestall-this-annual-christmas-gift-to-the-world