Advent 18 – 18 December 2021
Good morning,
We open today’s window in our St Andrews-themed Advent Calendar just a week before Christmas. Christmas carols are in the air. They are piped in Tesco and Morrisons, though there’s more Santa Baby than Child in the Manger. And while the University Carol Services in Holy Trinity Church and in London were cancelled, we are still going ahead with Carols by Candlelight on Christmas Eve (Friday 24 December). There will be three services in St Salvator’s Chapel at 2 pm, 4 pm and 6 pm. This chapel (and three services!) gives more chance for social distancing than the usual venue St Leonard’s Chapel. At each service, we’ll sing familiar carols as darkness falls on Christmas Eve, with readings by children and young people, and reflections from Sam and me on the story. We’re not asking people to reserve a space in advance, as it’s so difficult for people to know in advance whether they can attend, and all are welcome up to the chapel’s capacity with one-metre distance between households. Volunteers to read still welcome.
There is no chapel service tomorrow (Sunday 19 December), as the Martinmas Semester has come to an end. But as the Interim Moderator at St Margaret’s Church of Scotland in Glenrothes, I will be taking the service there along with students. Each student has prepared a reflection on a favourite Christmas carol, and after we hear that, we’ll sing it. Hymns are people’s theology – and carols express our understanding of the Christmas story. We’ll hear the truth of that tomorrow, in It came upon the midnight clear and The first Noel the angel did say, among others. If you would like to come, the service is at 10 am. Or you can take part online: here is a link to the service via Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87172043700?pwd=QXd5c0E3YVV6S3Yrb0lCWHQ0d3JrZz09
Meeting ID: 871 7204 3700
Passcode: 090012
Or you can watch later on youtube at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCklCF0L1Y6kjAdpq4ePGsRg
A carol which won’t feature tomorrow is Joy to the world, the Lord is come! by Isaac Watts. But every time I take a walk past the Grange Inn and then head across to Balmungo, I see this by the path:
And to conclude our meditation on carols, some words by Kay Redfield Jamison, a Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, and sometime Honorary Professor in our School of English. In her book An Unquiet Mind, she writes about a year she spent as an exchange student in St Andrews. This excerpt is in The Book of St Andrews: An Anthology, edited by Robert Crawford
That year I walked for long hours along the sea and through the town and sat for hours mulling and writing among the ancient ruins of the city. I never tired of imagining what the twelfth-century cathedral must once have been, what glorious stained glass must once have filled its now-empty stone-edged windows; nor could I escape the almost archetypal pullings of Sunday services in the college chapel, which, like the university itself, had been built during the early fifteenth century. The medieval traditions of learning and religion were threaded together in a deeply mystifying and wonderful way. The thick scarlet gowns of the undergraduates, said to be brightly coloured because of an early Scottish king’s decree that students, as potentially dangerous to the State, should be easily recognized, brought vivid contrast to the grey buildings of the town; and, after chapel, the red-gowned students would walk to the end of the town’s pier, further extending their vivid contrast to the dark skies and the sea.
It was, it is, a mystical place: full of memories of cold, clear nights and men and women in evening dress, long gloves, silk scarves, kilts, and tartan sashes over the shoulders of women in elegant floor-length silk gowns; an endless round of formal balls; late dinner parties of salmon, hams, fresh game, sherry, malt whiskies, and port; bright scarlet gowns on the backs of students on bicycles, in dining and lecture halls, in gardens, and on the ground as picnic blankets in the spring. There were late nights of singing and talking with my Scottish roommates; long banks of daffodils and bluebells on the hills above the sea; seaweed and rocks and limpet shells along the yellow, high-tided sands, and ravishingly beautiful Christmas services at the end of term: undergraduates in their long, bright gowns of red, and graduate students in their short, black sombre ones; the old and beautiful carols; hanging lamps of gold-chained crowns, and deeply carved wooden choir stalls; the recitation of lessons in both the English public school and the far gentler, more lyrical Scottish accents. Leaving the chapel late that winter night was to enter onto an ancient scene, the sight of scarlet against snow, the ringing of bells, and a clear, full moon.
I hope that somehow, wherever you are, in churches or in your comfiest chair at home, you are able to experience the old and beautiful carols over this coming week.
Yours,
Donald.