People love Christmas carols. But, whether we hear carols in the children’s nativity play, played in the shops, on the radio or in the parish carol service, there is no denying that by Midnight Mass we can be ‘carolled out’, and just when the glorias in excelsis should be beginning, we are ready to move on with the rest of the world, for whom Christmas begins in November and ends on Boxing Day.
As Catholics, we often bemoan the commercialisation of Christmas, the premature appearance of trees in Tesco and the advent calendars stuffed with chocolate which rather take the edge off the first box of Quality Street on Christmas morning. But all our early carol singing can have the same effect. The poor angels have their thunder stolen on Christmas night if we have been announcing the birth of Jesus since the first of December.
