Around 300 people attended our Christmas Eve and Christmas morning services – with a few dedicated double counts.
Our Family Service on Christmas Eve at 6pm was well attended by around 160 adults and lots of children. A singing of ‘Old Macdonald had an inn’ proved a great hit.
Around 80 came to our Watchnight Service at 11.30pm – most of the attendees, apart from the choir, were people from our wider community rather than our own members. It is good to know that the local community appreciates this service which closed with the lighting of the central candle on our Advent wreath.
On Christmas morning there were around 60 adults and children. The Rev Matthew Bicket, our locum (who conducted all three services) fired our imagination as we were reminded of the Christmas story with an interactive reading and a washing line of socks – woolly socks to remind us of the shepherds (no, we didn’t sing ‘While humble shepherds’!), baby socks, smelly socks (for the stable) and red socks looking ahead to Easter. Two ladies from South Africa joined us as visitors – they had searched far and wide for a Christmas morning service and we were delighted to welcome them to ours.
Grateful thanks go to Matthew for his wonderful services celebrating the birth of our Lord, to our stand-in organist, 
David, to Gordon on the sound desk to the duty teams – and again to the team who decorated the church so beautifully.
There were retiring collections at all three services – which will be split between our charity partner, Thistle, and church funds. The total on these is not yet known.
We hope that everyone has had a joyous day and we wish all our readers a peaceful and happy New Year.