Arrival

My father was an organist in both a Methodist chapel and an Anglican church; he was also a dedicated member of a Baptist choir and, later in life, married a Roman Catholic. If you are watching (or have read) Wolf Hall, you'll know he wouldn't have survived for long in the 16th century!

Depending on the day on which Christmas falls, advent doesn't always begin in December, but advent calendars always start today. By a happy coincidence, today is also the first Sunday in advent. The village has created a tradition of advent windows - like a calendar, but lighting one real, self-decorated window per day, and keeping them lit until Chrismas day. The church reserves for itself the right to do the 24th. The effort has become so popular that all the rest of the days have two windows

I remember my father's organists' hymn book with the tune having the strange name 'Adeste Fideles'. I remember struggling through enough Latin to understand that is just a translation of the first line. It was written in Latin; no-one really knows for sure who wrote it or when - with speculation ranging across several centuries. The English translator is more certain, an Oxford-educated Anglican priest called Frederick Oakeley in the 19th century. I think it is a masterpiece of translation, poetry and song-writing, crystalising Christian theology about the mystery of incarnation into a few simple, stirring words. The obscure origins add to its magic, I think 

It seems Frederick was a more fastidious man than my father - or he lived in less tolerant times. He became a member of an Anglican faction called the Oxford Movement - people who wanted the church to embrace beliefs, practices and structures that moved it closer, theologically and politically, to the Roman church. In effect, this was picking at the cultural scabs of the wounds from the 16th and 17th century religious wars, so highly controversial. Frederick understood this and asked a university court to judge whether or not he could retain both his new beliefs and his Oxford degree - to which the verdict was 'no'. His degree was suspended indefinitely and he eventually left the church and converted to Catholicism, but the 'fideles' singing it at midnight mass won't let that worry them