Let us be merry, our saviour is borne

Writing on the Catholic blog First Things, Matthew Schmitz remarks on why in English we say Merry (and not Happy) Christmas:

Christmas is conspicuously the only time of year when the word “merry” receives heavy use. The greeting “Merry Christmas” dates back to at least 1565, in which year the author of the Hereford Municipal Manuscript wrote “And thus I comytt you to god, who send you a merry Christmas & many.” Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, published in 1843, pushed it forward, as did industrialization: The first commercially sold Christmas card (also printed in 1843) contained the salutation “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You.”
…

Queen Elizabeth, a woman of serious low-church piety, is said to prefer “happy” to “merry” because she dislikes “merry’s” connotation of boisterousness, even slight intoxication. …

This moral suspicion of “Merry Christmas” dates back to the Methodist churchmen of the Victorian era who sought to promote sobriety among the English working class. Merrymaking of the ancient, alcoholic sort was frowned on year-round, perhaps never more so than during the celebration of the Savior’s birth. …

We may no longer associate “merry” with spirits alcoholic as well as high, but the meaning was once familiar. “Merry” appeared in both the Wyclife and King James bibles in reference to intoxication, where it describes an evening in the life of the rich man Nabal: “He held a feast in his house, like the feast of a king; and Nabal’s heart was merry within him, for he was very drunken.” (To wish someone a holiday feast like Nabal’s was to wish him a very good Christmas indeed.)

This of course brings us back to the central tension ever since the creation of the Church of England — between the Reformed (low church, Puritan, Methodist) and Anglo-Catholic (high church, Oxford Movement, Catholic without the Pope) branches of the CoE and Anglicanism.

Meanwhile, the meaning of “Merry” brought to mind the refrain of an English folk carol

A Virgin unspotted the Prophet foretold,
Should bring forth a Saviour which now we behold,
To be our Redeemer from Death, Hell and Sin,
Which Adam's transgression involved us in.

Then let us be merry,
Cast sorrow away.
Our Saviour Christ Jesus
Is born on this day.

The words officially date to a 1750 text, and although there are many tunes, the one I know is Judea by William Billings (1746-1800).

Wikisource calls it “an English Marian folk carol of medieval origin.” Although not the most reliable of sources, the text is undeniably Mary-centric and with Billing’s tune has an Elizabethan (i.e. 16th century) feel to it.

So if savouring the news of our Saviour is catholic, high church or Marian, I’m all for it.

Merry Christmas!

Church marketing in the 21st century

As part of my efforts to help my church improve its WWW presence, I went looking at what some other parishes in our diocese do. (A bit off-topic for this blog, but hopefully of interest to readers).

Looking at the content of pages I found some obvious suspects — Drupal, WordPress, even LightCMS. And then I found a company, Clover, that has its own content management system and specializes in church websites, and a couple of competitors who bought Google AdWords for anyone interested in that company.

Here is how they compare:

• CloverSites.com, $1000 up front, $20/month with its own content management system
• BridgeElement.com, $500 up front, $20/month also with its own content management system
• FaithConnector.com, $250 up front, $54 (or more)/month

The first two have very fair, all-inclusive pricing. I even found an article in ChurchMag (and a follow up) comparing Clover and Bridge Element. Alas, the review lists both as "Flash-based" — so 2000s and by now obsolete in this world of iPhones and other portable devices.

Interesting, in doing another google search, FaithConnector bought another ad that says: “Flash no longer on mobile devices? No problem for us. We're HTML5.” That's convincing for me, but not enough to pay twice as much every month.

Another google search brought two more candidates

• ekklesia360.com, $995 up front, $45+/month, but then they nickel and dime you for other features (such as "mobile site"). However, it seems to include other features like an integrated email newsletter and event management modules which seem like they would be important for many churches.
• iministries.org, $700 up front, $39+/month

It sees like the tools have come a long way since I set my (ECUSA) church's first website in 1998. I've also learned a lot about websites in the past decade, so I would look for

• easy content update: this is essential, as websites are run by volunteers (or even the rector) with limited amounts of time
• non-technical interface: this is probably the only website this volunteer does, unlike an ISP or company where the maintainer can come up to speed on Drupal, Joomla, Plone
• easy changes to layout: some CMS seem to force you to have a particular layout, but maybe you need to tweak your layout to put a larger sidebar logo or header picture
• automatic publishing/rolloff: I don't know how many times I’ve looked at a site in January that still lists the Christmas service times — because taking down the old content is not the most important thing we have to do on Dec. 26.
• automatic support for mobile devices — which don’t have a mouse for navigating complex menus, may have a small screen (as small as 320x480) and certainly don’t want to mess with flash (even if it’s installed)
• good hosting and support options

I think the latter is the strength and weakness of these dedicated church hosting companies. The strength is that they do everything; the weakness is that you can’t migrate your hosting to another ISP. But frankly, the latter seems unlikely — instead, you're just going to create a new site from scratch, as every organization seems to do every 3-6 years.

Presumably most of these will do Google Analytics or similar for website tracking. Some probably integrate directly (as do WordPress or Joomla) while for others you need to be able to add HTML to the header or template.

One key question is whether the website includes things like email marketing, or whether the parish wants to integrate with a separate church management system — e.g. to do an email blast to all the members. I imagine this decision will be made already by most parishes, but I suppose (as at our current church) there are churches where the existing tools are weak and ready to be replaced.

I also need to investigate integration with social media: Facebook, Twitter, RSS — and perhaps LinkedIn or Google+. I tried to search the respective websites, but only one of the companies seemed to provide such integration — ekklesia360.com — although Clover seems to provide an RSS feed for many of their hosted sites. Since Facebook killed direct RSS feeds, I’ll have to explore some of the other options to see how this works.

I am guessing that where we’ll end up is have a committee make a list of requirements, sift through the various generic and church-specific packages and then take one out for a test spin. (Possibly including setting up a fake church page to prove that it will feed correctly).

60s greatest hit

A music director or priest has to make many liturgical decisions every week: sometimes their choices are inexplicable, sometimes they miss a great opportunity, and sometimes the lectionary and hymn guides make it nearly impossible to get it wrong.

Yet other times, everything comes together as if the Kapellmeister of Leipzig, JS Bach himself, had planned it out. That’s what happened Sunday when we attended a “blended” service at a Hymnal 1982 ACNA parish.

The readings didn’t follow the RCL assignment for Year B Proper 19 nor that in the 1979 “prayer book”. The first reading, Deuteronomy 8:1-10, described manna from heaven. The last reading, the Gospel, made explicit the linkage between the Hebrews in the Sinai and Holy Communion:

37 All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.
38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.
39 And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.
…
43 Jesus answered them, …
44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.
45 It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me—
46 not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father.
47 Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life.
48 I am the bread of life.
49 Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.
50 This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.
51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. (John 6:37-51)

For communion, after an Amy Grant CCM song, the bulletin provided the words for Hymn #335 from Hymnal 1982:

I am the bread of life; they who come to me shall not hunger; they who believe in me shall not thirst. No one can come to me unless the Father draw them.

Refrain: And I will raise them up, and I will raise them up, and I will raise them up on the last day.

The bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world; and they who eat of this bread, they shall live forever, they shall live forever. Refrain.

I am the resurrection, I am the life. They who believe in me, even if they die, they shall live forever. Refrain.

Yes, Lord we believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who has come into the world. Refrain.

Unfamiliar with the tune, my eldest asked if this was from Hymnal 1982. She recognized that if I could sing the harmony of the refrain from memory, that it held a special place in my heart. (She also asked if “Amazing Grace” was in H40, thus recognizing the only other significant improvement provided by H82 over H40).

As I wrote three years ago:

[W]ithin Hymnal 1982 are a few new hymns that I am convinced will survive to the 22nd century, including my all-time favorite, the 1966 “I Am the Bread of Life” by Sister Suzanne Toolan.

Toolan’s text works as a direct restatement of John’s gospel — a linkage I never heard before this week. (It appears that H82 uses a PC “inclusive” version of the text, but I don’t have access to the original online.)

But, sappy as it is, her music also seems to work in a timeless way. The verses (where the congregation usually has more trouble singing) have a very simple voice leading, even if the melisma is not very intuitive and inconsistent between verses. The refrain has a more dramatic leading, but after five verses, just about anyone could learn it. And — my own particular joy — the bass part is very easy, with V-I-V-I' at the root of the chord progression in the first phrase, and nearly as simple for the remainder of the refrain. Hence my ability to sing the refrain — from memory — as we waited and walked up to the communion rail.

I have not read Toolan’s story, so I don’t know how long it took her to write and compose this hymn. Still, after suffering through the fingernails on chalkboard of so many Celebration and other CCM hymns of the past 40 years, the inspiration of this one success suggests that it might be possible to compose my own text (or tune) someday.

Dial H for Pentecost

Today we celebrated Pentecost at a Hymnal 1982 ACNA parish. This prompted me to contrast Hymnal 1982 and Hymnal 1940 in how they handle Pentecost.

The most obvious difference is that in 1940, the feast was called Whitsunday. As the 1912 New Catholic Encyclopedia writes:

Pentecost (Whitsunday)

A feast of the universal Church which commemorates the Descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles, fifty days after the Resurrection of Christ, on the ancient Jewish festival called the "feast of weeks" or Pentecost (Exodus 34:22; Deuteronomy 16:10). Whitsunday is so called from the white garments which were worn by those who were baptised during the vigil; Pentecost ("Pfingsten" in German), is the Greek for "the fiftieth" (day after Easter).

Whitsunday, as a Christian feast, dates back to the first century, although there is no evidence that it was observed, as there is in the case of Easter; …

That Whitsunday belongs to the Apostolic times is stated in the seventh of the (interpolated) fragments attributed to St. Irenæus. In Tertullian (On Baptism 19) the festival appears as already well established. The Gallic pilgrim gives a detailed account of the solemn manner in which it was observed at Jerusalem ("Peregrin. Silviæ", ed. Geyer, iv). The Apostolic Constitutions (Book V, Part 20) say that Pentecost lasts one week, but in the West it was not kept with an octave until at quite a late date. It appears from Berno of Reichenau (d. 1048) that it was a debatable point in his time whether Whitsunday ought to have an octave. At present it is of equal rank with Easter Sunday.

The two have a surprisingly similar approach. Hymnal 1940 lists 5 Whitsunday hymns (#107-111) and Hymnal 1982 lists 8 Pentecost hymns (#223-230). This morning, we opened with the most memorable hymn on either list: Salve Festa Dies (H40: #107, H82: #225), i.e. the Pentecost variant of Ralph Vaughan Williams’ second greatest hit (after his Nov. 1 classic).

What’s interesting in both hymnals is that the real hymnody comes from the list of hymns about the Holy Spirit (née Holy Ghost). For H40, it’s under “also the following” (13 hymns total) while H82 it’s under a section formally titled “Holy Spirit” (#500-516). Many of the great hymns fall under this category, include “Come, Holy Spirit, Heavenly Dove” (H40: #369; H82: #510) that we sang today.

One we didn’t sing was “Come down, O Love divine” (H40: #376, H82: #516), but with the 15th century lyric and the wonderful Vaughan Williams tune Down Ampney, we really should have. (After I wrote this posting, I noticed that bjs of Chantblog posted today a tribute to this, “the best hymn ever written.” High praise indeed.)

The other hymn I wish we had sung (perhaps at communion) is “Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire” (H40: #217, H82: #504) to Veni Creator. However, I understand the decision not to use it, because this Sarum (i.e. medieval Salisbury) chant requires either a good quality choir or an moderately large and experience congregation. I love plainsong but have come to recognize through my wanderings among the Anglican diaspora is that the average parish can’t handle plainsong without considerable practice.

Neither hymnal considers “Take my life, and let it be” (H40: #408; H82: #707) to be a hymn about Pentecost or the Holy Ghost. I disagree, but maybe that’s just how a particular Pentecost sermon struck me two years ago.

Overall, I think that H82 made a good choice to group some (even if not all) of the Holy Ghost hymns into one place — making it easier to find a good Pentecost hymn under “H” if not under “P”.

Principles of Anglo-Catholic worship

From page 2 of the 66-page booklet “The Order for Low Mass and Solemn High Mass,” St. Mary of the Angels:

Worship at St. Mary’s

St. Mary’s is a parish church with her roots set firmly in the Catholic tradition of Anglicanism. Our worship is centered around the Holy Eucharist (the Mass), continuing in the Tradition we have received from the Apostles, to whom the Lord JESU was “known in the Breaking of the Bread.” Our worship is that of traditional Western Catholicism, with a uniquely Anglican flavor. The ancient chant, the medieval vestments and the Elizabeth language may make our worship seems a bit strange to those unfamiliar with it, but these things are not irrelevant or old-fashioned. For 2000 years the solemn ceremonial of the Mass, the veil of incense which fills the church during the liturgy, and the stately cadences of the Book of Common Prayer speak to us (as they have spoken to many generations of our ancestors in the Faith) of the glory and majesty of God. It is to God the Holy Trinity, the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, that our worship is directed. The purpose of worship is not to entertain or inform us, but to turn “ourselves our souls and bodies” to God. So if the Mass seems a bit strange to you, relax. Sit through it if you’re curious. You may catch a glimpse, even if just for a moment, of heaven.

-- Fr. Gregory Wilcox, rector

This statement by Fr. Wilcox, fourth rector of St. Mary’s (1986-2006), articulates both a general philosophy of Anglo-Catholicism and the particular Catholic-leaning interpretation that predates the Vatican’s 2009 announcement of the Ordinariate and St. Mary’s recent efforts to become Anglican rite Catholics.