From the magazine

What The Spectator taught Benjamin Franklin

Marcus Walker
EXPLORE THE ISSUE 14 December 2024
issue 14 December 2024

Marcus Walker has narrated this article for you to listen to.

Christmas came early this year. No, I’m not moaning about the carols that my local café started piping at the beginning of September (although that’s enough to enrage any priest). This year my first proper Christmas moment occurred two weeks early when a lovely couple chose to have not one but two Christmas carols for their wedding. We hadn’t even hit December before I found myself in the curmudgeonly position of muttering ‘Except Easter’ as a full church belted out the line ‘This holy tide of Christmas all other doth efface’. It was all very jolly, even if I felt momentarily Scroogelike.

Not that this was the most amusing of the winter weddings that we’ve held at my church, St Bartholomew the Great in West Smithfield. One year the whole church was – rather to our surprise and without an enormous amount of warning – transformed into a winter wonderland, which was fine until the elaborate decorations proved too large for the bride’s dress to get down the nave accompanied by the groom. One would have to walk a few paces behind the other and, this not being Afghanistan, in the event it was the groom.

‘Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics,’ say the generals. Logistics are essential for St Bart’s at Christmas time, with more than 25 carol services being hosted between now and Epiphany. Sometimes it’s the absolute basics that let you down. Last year during our American carol service the lights went out. All of them. Just as the Ninth Lesson was about to be read.

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