Christmas Day Morning Prayer & Carols, December 25, 2025.

Welcome to Christmas Day Morning Prayer & Carolst, December 25, 2025. We are so glad that you are joining us for our service. Please go to https://tinyurl.com/y2npknr for the bulletin Music streamed with permission under ONE LICENSE 716206-A. Britton Trimble's Homily for Christmas Day 2025 - Luke 2:8-20 I pray that God has guided me in writing these words, will guide me in speaking them, and will guide us all in hearing the message each of us needs to hear today, in the name of the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer. Amen. Merry Christmas to you all! As we begin the season of Christmas, I’ve been thinking of how many folks will take down their decorations tomorrow, or very soon, and how many radio stations that have been playing Christmas music for weeks will stop tomorrow. They all just stop celebrating right after the birth of Jesus has happened! But isn’t Christmas Day is just beginning of the season of Christmas? Note that Luke takes only few verses near the beginning of chapter two, just before today’s Gospel selection, to talk about the glorious birth itself. Luke does, however, dedicate more verses to the angels proclaiming the great news that the Savior has been born! Then, Luke dedicates still more verses to the shepherds, who hear the news, decide to go see this amazing thing that has happened, and then spread the glorious news. It is much later in Luke than today’s Gospel reading that the Wise Men are even mentioned. In these verses from today’s Gospel, though, is our clue for what perhaps we should be up to today and in the days following the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ: continuing to tell the story! Those un-named shepherds who are the focus of today’s Gospel story were the ones to whom the angels appeared, the ones who decided to go see the newborn messiah for themselves, and the ones who spread the word that Jesus had been born! They didn’t call it a day once the birth happened, but instead, as Luke says, “made known what had been told them about this child” and “went about glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.” So, this Christmas morning, odd as it might seem to us, much of the world is simultaneously celebrating Christmas and on the verge of calling it a day on the Christmas season. But my thoughts turn to how we, the church, now not only get to celebrate the birth of Christ, but now we get to follow the example of the shepherds and turn to the joyful work of telling the news of Christ’s birth and glorifying and praising God for this marvelous thing. Even though the world around us is ready to move on to the next thing, today is truly just the beginning of the time in the church year set aside for us to focus on celebrating the birth of our Lord Christ Jesus and focus on spreading that marvelous good news! This year we at St. Andrew's really are living into that Christmas Season, with our pageant set to be held during the 10am service on January 4, right around the time when wise men show up. And our wonderful tradition of holding the service of Epiphany Lessons and Carols, which returns this year on January 4, is a beautiful summation of the entire Christmas season! So, why not lean into the opportunity of Christmas as a season?! After all, Christmas Day is Day One of the 12 days of Christmas! With all this in mind, I encourage us all to be the church in the world throughout this season. Let’s keep celebrating the birth of Christ-- let’s keep spreading the good news. Amen.