The Nativity 2023
I'm sorry - I have been running around all week and have not had a chance to read my FList - please point me at interesting or important posts and I will try to catch up.
But during the week I have done quite a lot of baking, written a lot of Christmas cards (apologies if I have missed you - it won't have been on purpose!), put up a lot of the Christmas decorations both indoors and outside, sorted out the script and Powerpoint for this morning's Nativity Service, run the cake stall at the Church Coffee morning - and then led the Nativity Service.
This afternoon I am mainly collapsed in a heap! Although I still haven't tidied the conservatory and put up the small tree...
So here are some pictures of the interior of church, ready to celebrate Christmas - they are on Flickr so if you click you can then see them bigger.
This is the left side of the Sanctuary. The pulpit is tucked in behind there! But we usually just use the lectern over Christmas :)
And the right side, in front of the organ. Madeline, our Organist, can just peep through to see the congregation!
This display is in the centre aisle -
I took the photos after the coffee morning when all was quiet - hence no congregation. But Emily was still around as her Dad was helping with the tidy up and putting everything back into place. This picture contains a bonus addition courtesy of Emily -
There is a donkey - and you can just see Emily's arm holding it in place :)
And this arrangement is in one of the back corners -
The other back corner has a Christmas Tree in it.
Our cake stall raised almost £150 which will be donated to the United Nations World Food Programme. Traditionally the children help with the cake stall and decide where they wish to donate the money - this year they agreed it should go 'to help the children in Gaza who have no homes any more, and no food'. The WFP seemed to fit the bill nicely.
And now to the Nativity itself. The prep drove me slightly mad. It should have been easy as I was recycling a version from 5 years ago which already had a Powerpoint presentation, that came from the Bible Reading Foundation, saved on my computer.
But the accompanying script from the BRF was in the first person - and this time round it needed to be in the third person. Should be easy - the original was a Word document, so just go through and make a few tweaks - except that when I tried I discovered the entire script was a series of text boxes... and I couldn't alter the contents of them.
So what should have taken me about half an hour ended up taking hours as I typed out the whole script, including highlighting the prompts for changing the pictures and, in another colour, the prompts for when the congregation were to join in with actions or sound effects.
Then to add the prayers, readings, and words for the carols, into the Powerpoint. When we did it before we just used the presentation from BRF of the actual story on the screen, and hymn books and bits of paper for the readers. But these days we usually put everything onto the screens.
This would take two hours or so, even though much of it was copying and pasting - but I like to add backgrounds for things like the lighting of the Advent candles. In the end it took me at least another hour because, having both the original and the one with additions open, I managed to add two of the carols to the wrong version!!
But, this morning it all worked, and everyone had fun taking part, singing carols, adding actions and sound effects in relevant places; and it was lovely.
As usual we brought down all the costumes from the storage area and then, if you haven't brought your own, you can pick one and join in on the spot...! My niece took this picture for me -
Edie has progressed from playing the infant to being a shepherd! You can just see her there with my sister who is also dressed as a shepherd and was shepherding the tiny shepherd and her sheep.
And the aforementioned Emily decided she would like to be Mary - this is a photo from her Mum, who must have taken it at almost exactly the same second as Lizzie took the other one -
And now I can almost relax on the last slope to Christmas Day! Just a few bits of shopping to do and a bit more baking of presents.
But during the week I have done quite a lot of baking, written a lot of Christmas cards (apologies if I have missed you - it won't have been on purpose!), put up a lot of the Christmas decorations both indoors and outside, sorted out the script and Powerpoint for this morning's Nativity Service, run the cake stall at the Church Coffee morning - and then led the Nativity Service.
This afternoon I am mainly collapsed in a heap! Although I still haven't tidied the conservatory and put up the small tree...
So here are some pictures of the interior of church, ready to celebrate Christmas - they are on Flickr so if you click you can then see them bigger.
This is the left side of the Sanctuary. The pulpit is tucked in behind there! But we usually just use the lectern over Christmas :)
And the right side, in front of the organ. Madeline, our Organist, can just peep through to see the congregation!
This display is in the centre aisle -
I took the photos after the coffee morning when all was quiet - hence no congregation. But Emily was still around as her Dad was helping with the tidy up and putting everything back into place. This picture contains a bonus addition courtesy of Emily -
There is a donkey - and you can just see Emily's arm holding it in place :)
And this arrangement is in one of the back corners -
The other back corner has a Christmas Tree in it.
Our cake stall raised almost £150 which will be donated to the United Nations World Food Programme. Traditionally the children help with the cake stall and decide where they wish to donate the money - this year they agreed it should go 'to help the children in Gaza who have no homes any more, and no food'. The WFP seemed to fit the bill nicely.
And now to the Nativity itself. The prep drove me slightly mad. It should have been easy as I was recycling a version from 5 years ago which already had a Powerpoint presentation, that came from the Bible Reading Foundation, saved on my computer.
But the accompanying script from the BRF was in the first person - and this time round it needed to be in the third person. Should be easy - the original was a Word document, so just go through and make a few tweaks - except that when I tried I discovered the entire script was a series of text boxes... and I couldn't alter the contents of them.
So what should have taken me about half an hour ended up taking hours as I typed out the whole script, including highlighting the prompts for changing the pictures and, in another colour, the prompts for when the congregation were to join in with actions or sound effects.
Then to add the prayers, readings, and words for the carols, into the Powerpoint. When we did it before we just used the presentation from BRF of the actual story on the screen, and hymn books and bits of paper for the readers. But these days we usually put everything onto the screens.
This would take two hours or so, even though much of it was copying and pasting - but I like to add backgrounds for things like the lighting of the Advent candles. In the end it took me at least another hour because, having both the original and the one with additions open, I managed to add two of the carols to the wrong version!!
But, this morning it all worked, and everyone had fun taking part, singing carols, adding actions and sound effects in relevant places; and it was lovely.
As usual we brought down all the costumes from the storage area and then, if you haven't brought your own, you can pick one and join in on the spot...! My niece took this picture for me -
Edie has progressed from playing the infant to being a shepherd! You can just see her there with my sister who is also dressed as a shepherd and was shepherding the tiny shepherd and her sheep.
And the aforementioned Emily decided she would like to be Mary - this is a photo from her Mum, who must have taken it at almost exactly the same second as Lizzie took the other one -
And now I can almost relax on the last slope to Christmas Day! Just a few bits of shopping to do and a bit more baking of presents.