Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Which Christmas Mass are you attending?

A little more than a year ago, we moved across town and joined a new parish, much larger than our last one. It has been a great community to get plugged into and get to know.

I'm always interested to see how things are done there. One interesting change this year for the parish has been some modifications to the Christmas liturgy schedule.

  • The Christmas Vigil Mass is a children's Mass held at 5 p.m. By all accounts, this is by far the best-attended liturgy.
  • Midnight Mass has been moved up to 10 p.m. (hoping to draw more families frightened by the late hour)
  • Only one Mass on Christmas Day, at 10 a.m. 
From our days in Rome as a young family, we've always attended Midnight Mass. Our four kids (the oldest is now 13) probably couldn't imagine Christmas otherwise -- the anticipation, setting out Christmas clothes before being made to lie down for a few hours of sleep (yeah, right) before getting up in the middle of the night to go to church.

But I want to ask about the Christmas Day experience in your parish. Are you, like us, seeing fewer and fewer Catholics forgo Christmas Day Mass in favor of Christmas Eve?

Interestingly, that seems to be a trend in some Protestant communities, too — even in a year like this in which Christmas falls on a Sunday. The Baptist Press reported a few weeks ago that a full 6 percent of Protestant churches plan to have a Christmas Eve service but NO service on Christmas Day. A few years ago, The New York Times ran a story titled, "When Christmas falls on Sunday, megachurches take the day off," and detailed the controversy over the practice.

What are things like where you live? And what Mass will you be attending?

DISQUS for OSV Daily Take