planet telex

With Christmas coming I started to recall some of the Christmas services back in the days of TOLLS, thinking that some of teh liturgies might be useful to people I tracked a couple down and cleaned them up a tad. I’ve got another two partial liturgies that I’ll actually clean up this week and post later, but for now here are four liturgies from The Other Late Late Service Christmas archives…

A Christmas Whinge…

Listening to the news
Watching the weather
Counting down the days
Trying to keep it all together

Family dynamics
Cards from all over
Lists of presents to buy

Parties to endure
People to invite
Shops knee deep in fake snow

Listening to the news
Watching the weather
Counting down the days
Trying to keep it all together

Shops crammed
Traffic crawling
Everything that isn’t moving wrapped in tinsel

Children pleading
Santas laughing
Deadlines past for sending overseas

Listening to the news
Watching the weather
Counting down the days
Trying to keep it all together

Carols blaring
Mothers yelling
Watching the bank account disappear

Factories closing
Weight rising
Buy it now and pay in the new year

Listening to the news
Watching the weather
Counting down the days
Trying to keep it all together

Christmas Journey (pdf)
This service was a progressive liturgy in which we walked around the suburb in which we lived/worshiped, we walked from the church, through the paddock, to the pub, up to the railway and back through the paddock tot he church. As we walked we reminded ourselves of the journey that Jesus’ parents took, that the wise men took and that Jesus took in running away to hide…

Christmas Whinge (pdf)
We sat around for lunch one day and began to whinge about all the things that Christmas had become to each of us, we started to write a creed to describe what we thought Christmas was not about and, as it started to look like a petition we created a service around it. This service was a time for us to complain about Christmas time, abotu consumerism, about being forced to work… and it became a time to remember what christmas was actually about.

When God Breaks Through (pdf)
Inspired by Leonard Cohen’s song “Anthem” we sat around the lunch table one day and spoke about how the birth of Jesus was a time when God broke through the darkness, as the conversation continued we ended up with a service based around food and times where God breaks through.

Stations of the Manger (pdf)
This service was from way back in the days where we were at Clayton Wesley UCA, the church there was a massive rabbit warren and it was easy to move from one space to another, around to the graveyard and back, several services used a process that involved us walking around the place. I remember this service more for the weird idea of combining Santa and Herod, for the idea of a santa wearing a Hungry Jacks crown…