Is your Church having a shorter service this Sunday, Christmas?

Christmas falls on Sunday this year. An appropriate day for our blessed Lord and saviors birthday. :smiley:

But, the realities are families are pretty busy Christmas morning. Opening presents and then preparing Christmas dinner.

My church is skipping Sunday school. We’ll have the normal mid morning service. The sermon will be shorter and people can get home & start cooking.

What’s your church planning this Sunday, Christmas?

The one where I work is closed for the year, coming back January 2. It’s mostly outreach ministries and we did all our reaching out this week. The chapel will be open January 1 but no service will be held.

We’re having identical services tonight & tomorrow morning. One hour, no Sun School. Our services (Assembly of God) usually go two hours.

I’m an atheist, but I find the idea of churches cancelling or shortening services because of Christmas both bizarre and amusing.

my Anglican church is having two services on Christmas Eve (one at five for families with small children, and one later in the evening), plus one service on Sunday, regular time. (there’s normally 2 on Sundays, but for major events we just have one to have the entire congregation there at once; same as at Easter).

doesn’t matter that Christmas is on a Sunday this year - there’s always Christmas Day services.

Misa del Gallo at midnight, like every Dec 25. It’s longer than a regular Mass: those normally last about 45’, this one goes to 1h30’.

Regular Mass at 10:30

Christmas Mass with all the trimmings instead of the regular Children’s Mass, at noon. It’s longer and more kumbayah than usual (this parish is Capuchins, the other contenders for Most Kumbayah Order In The RCC is their parent order, the Franciscans).

And a Sung Mass at 8pm, instead of the usual afternoon Mass. It’s sung because the priest chants everything except the sermon, instead of saying it normally. Longer and more solemn than usual.

All of them with the Adoration of the Child afterwards, which can take half an hour by itself (people lining up to kiss an image of the Baby Jesus).

I’m trying to picture Padre José receiving the suggestion of shortening Mass so people can start on the salad and coming up with a call to the EMTs…

It makes me laugh, too, and I’m Christian ;). We just recently became members of our church, but even growing up, the Sunday closest to Christmas always had shortened services, too. With everyone traveling, or with relatives over, there aren’t enough people in attendance to have three full services on Sunday morning.

We have three services scheduled today - a 3 PM Children’s Service (which is the one we’ll be attending as a family because I teach choir for the 3-5 year olds and we are performing), a 7 PM service, and the 11 PM Candlelight Service (which have always been my favorite, and I may attend ours by myself tonight if I’m not passed out from exhaustion by then). Tomorrow at 10 AM, we have a carol sing. Activities and weekly small groups are canceled this week, obviously, but everything goes back to normal next week (I think we have a shortened schedule on New Year’s, probably because most of us will be too hung over to show up…heh).

Ours always has a Chistmas Eve service, but no Christmas Day service. Except this year, in which we’re having Eve and Day services since Day falls on the regular worship day. The only thing different for tomorrow is no Sunday school.

We have a Christmas Eve service tonight at 5pm. Our normal Sunday schedule is service at 9:30, with growth groups at 8:30 and 11:00, but this Sunday we’ll have church service at 10:30 and no growth groups.

Ours changed up because they realize we want to spend the morning with our families.

Exactly the same as at my church. I’m Episcopalian, so I guess I’m an Anglican too!:smiley:

Normally on Sunday we have two services, but tomorrow just one. But on January the 1st it will be two services as usual!

We always have a Christmas Day service, no matter what day of the week it is. It’s not usually all that well attended, but it’s there. The bishop of our diocese heard of one congregation that was going to skip the Sunday service and said he was going to have a LONG talk with them.

Sounds very similar. Here, the Dean is taking the eucharist tonight, and the Bishop is handling the Sunday morning service.

My church is holding service at 4:30 this afternoon (Christmas Eve) instead of tomorrow morning. Which is fine with me, since my job (foodservice) is making me work on Christmas (gotta have a Christmas buffet ya know, despite the fact that it loses money every year since hardly anybody shows up for it and they have to pay us double-time-and-a-half to work it).

I’m not a churchgoer anymore, but I do remember when there was a Sunday Christmas many years ago. The church adamantly decided that there would be the same number and length services, at the same times as always.

Rumor had it that attendance was dismal (about 1/3 of the usual amount) at the regular 10AM service, and the earlier one was attended by less than 10% of the usual congregation. I bet they won’t be making that mistake again. Churches are a business, after all… :slight_smile:

Christmas on Sunday happens every seven years? Next year it will be on a Monday?

It really isn’t a big problem for Churches to shorten their service this rarely.

Tuesday, actually - 2012 is a Leap Year.

I attend this mega-mega church which until this year has never had a service on 12/25 so that the staff can celebrate Christmas with their families.

But six or so years ago when Christmas fell on a Sunday, our church was the butt of an outrageous amount of internet criticism for not “keeping holy the Sabbath” by not meeting on a Sunday.

So this year we will officially have a service on Christmas day. The Pastor’s son will run the audio and video, his son-in-law will lead the worship, his wife and daughter will do the ushering and the Pastor will give the message. That’s it-no orchestra, no choir, no greeters, no Sunday school, no traffic control, no food court–none of the 1,000 or so volunteers that it usually takes to put on a Sunday service.

The pastor has advised everyone not to come. We cannot handle the crush of 6 or so thousand attendees, so please do not come. “We are only doing this to fend off criticism from the evangelical Christian community. I can promise you the most forgettable message you have ever heard in the world.”

Personally, I would not miss this for the world. Come Hell or high water, I will be there.

'Course I suppose if everyone else takes the same tack, we’ll be in a lot of trouble tomorrow.

It’s true that this year, because Christmas is on a Sunday, the 7 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. Masses have been cut – but that’s because those who orchestrate these Masses, including yours truly as a choir member, will have gone to bed about 3 a.m. the night before. Christmas Vigil Midnight Mass is huge, SRO, takes forever. But we still have two later Sunday morning Masses left, one in English and the other in Spanish. Both of which I guarantee will be jam packed. I don’t think our Catholic parish is particularly unusual, either.

My church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints) is having only the sacrament meeting (10 to 11 a.m. in our ward’s case) and not the Sunday School and men’s/women’s group hours that usually follow it.

Business as usual for us. Conservative church of Christ, runs about 130-140 in attendance on Sunday mornings. Bible study at 9:30, worship at 10:30 and 6.