91Èȱ¬

From Canon Ann Easter, Chaplain to the Queen:

Tonight’s a very special night and I’ll be at Midnight Mass with loads of people, some our usual congregation and some who don’t come to church at any other time but somehow feel drawn to come on Christmas Eve when we celebrate the birth of Jesus.

I think I can sympathise a bit with Mary, Jesus’s mother, because I was expecting my first baby at Christmas time and I was excited and apprehensive all at once. As I would later say to women many, many times when I was Chaplain to the maternity hospital, becoming a mother changes you for ever; you see the world in a different light.

As the time drew near, I felt a change of pace somehow, as if my body were squaring up for the massive task ahead – they don’t call it labour for nothing! I made two jellies and peeled tons of potatoes, then washed the kitchen floor, and, with that, we were away! And one thing’s for sure, once labour gets going, you’re stuck there til the job is done!

Katy Mary Louise weighed just 4 pounds with pale ginger hair and big blue eyes. We made it to my Nan’s for Christmas Day and you can imagine the debate as all my aunts marvelled at her tininess and tried to decide who she looked like.

I think that every baby born, whether in Sandringham or Syria, is a miracle but Christians believe that, that first Christmas night, Heaven and Earth came very close as God became human in Jesus; the angels sang and nothing was ever quite the same again. Somehow, tonight makes sense of the laughter and tears, and the hopes and fears, the worry and the wondering, they don’t seem to matter quite so much because God has truly shared in our lives and knows what it’s like.

And tonight, we’ll sing the old familiar carols at the tops of our voices and wish each other Merry Christmas all the way home but, somewhere in amongst the hullabaloo, there will be a moment of quiet and, if you keep very still, you might hear the angels singing, and they’ll sing, Glory to God in the Highest and Peace be on all the Earth.