With Christmas fast approaching, Palm Beach’s churches are preparing for the season with special holiday services.
The Christian holiday celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ is on Thursday, with every church in town planning festive services to celebrate the holiday.
Here’s a list of Christmas services happening in Palm Beach:
The Episcopal Church of Bethesda-By-The-Sea
141 South County Road
Festivities begin on Christmas Eve at 4 p.m., with the Christmas Pageant, during which young parishioners will take part in reenacting the birth of Jesus Christ.
“It’s endearing, but it’s also powerful because our youngest parishioners are telling this incredible story of how God loved this world so much that he sent his son to be born in Bethlehem, and that’s an astonishing thing,” said Rev. Tim Schenck, the church’s rector.
The performance will also feature the Bethesda Choir backed by local musicians. The event concludes with the Holy Eucharist, a Christian sacrament that commemorates the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The church will also host two Christmas Eve services, featuring a sermon and the Bethesda Choir backed by local musicians. The first service will start at 7 p.m., while the second will start at 10 p.m.
Bethesda’s choir will welcome parishioners with choral music 25 minutes before each of two evening services.
On Christmas Day, the church will also host a service at 11 a.m. featuring the church’s choir.
“I love hearing the Bethesda choir and the band just bringing the story to life through music, and carols, and all of the traditions that make Christmas at Bethesda so special,” Schenck told the Daily News.
Royal Poinciana Chapel
60 Cocoanut Row
Royal Poinciana Chapel is starting its Christmas Eve celebrations at 4 p.m. with a Service of Lessons and Carols, which features Bible readings interspersed with Christmas carols. Providing the holiday songs will the chapel’s choir backed by the Krescendo string ensemble plus flute, trumpet and organ. Children are encouraged to sing along and participate in the service’s nativity scene reenactment.
Then at 8 p.m., the church will have its traditional service. It’s similar, but geared towards the church’s adult parishioners.
St. Edward Catholic Church
144 North County Road
Holiday songs will echo through the halls of Palm Beach’s Catholic church at 4 p.m. Christmas Eve, with a service featuring Christmas carols and other holiday selections led by the church’s choir. The church’s rector, the Rt. Rev. Archimandrite Glen J. Pothier, said the music-filled service has always been a hit with children.
The church will also be hosting a mass at 6 p.m., for those unable to attend the Midnight Mass, Pothier said.
At 11 p.m., Pothier said the church will dim its lights for an hourlong musical performance by the choir backed by a full range of instruments including, organ, trumpets, French horn, violins and timpani. “That’s going to feature all kinds of traditional hymns and a capella singing too,” Pothier told the Daily News.
Then at midnight, the church will transition to its Midnight Mass, a service Pothier said holds a “much more mystical” subtext.
“Since it’s dark outside, you have the feeling of being in that first Christmas,” he said, noting the importance of the Star of Bethlehem in the story of Jesus Christ’s birth. “It also straddles between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and inaugurates a new era, that the Messiah is born.”
On Christmas, the church will begin with its traditional quiet 7 a.m. service. After which, the choir and instruments will return for the church’s three other Christmas Day services at 9 a.m., 10:30 a.m.; and 12 p.m.
Diego Diaz Lasa is a journalist at the Palm Beach Daily News, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at dlasa@pbdailynews.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Daily News: Palm Beach churches prepare for festive Christmas services
Reporting by Diego Diaz Lasa, Palm Beach Daily News / Palm Beach Daily News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
