We are considering doing a "Lessons and Carols" in conjunction with our Annual Christmas Concert/ fundraiser this year for our Monastery but we have never done it. My understanding is that there is quasi-liturgical element to this but Im not sure where to look and how to put this together.
Does anyone have suggestions on how to make this work well/ resources. Thank you so much. God Bless.
Edit: specifically if anyone has old pdfs of programmes for example, or anything explaining the typical order of events.
This will be our second year doing Lessons & Carols. I've attached the draft program (still a work in progress) for this year's festival. Don't consider it the "definitive Lessons & Carols." Just one example of how we've chosen to approach it at the parish level.
Here is my parish's Lessons & Carols program, based on the original Anglican service as well as some previous readings/order of service collections I inherited from my predecessor. Since we do the program at least a week before Christmas, we keep it pretty Advent-y, and only do seven readings. I'm also happy to share our program template, etc...it took forever to put this all together so I'm happy to save someone else the time.
You should be able to guess why it has Nine Lessons followed by responses (Carols). Our choir would usually have a carol party with copious amounts of Mulled wine and mince pies but not the full carolling with dancing as sadly as our house was too small.
A few years ago I suggested to our Parish Priest that we could have a Carol based fundraiser for the choir in our Parish rooms. So the choir that sings at the N.O. would have the Anglican 9 lessons and modern carols, followed by Traditional carols, Mulled wine and mince pies in the Parish hall.
I was taught that an Advent Lessons and Carols should only have Advent Carols, and not explicit Christmas Carols. It keeps one in the season of waiting, unless of course, it is programmed during Christmastide.
It's a really lovely thing if you can begin the readings with a brave and tiny chorister doing Genesis and work your way up through the parish hierarchy so that the priest does the last one. Gives me the shivers just thinking about it. Save me a seat and a mince pie, will you?
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