12th December 2025

Everyone knows Kings College Cambridge Nine Lessons and Carol Service broadcast worldwide on Christmas Eve. Few know that there is a similar service every year on Advent Sunday. In origin, before radio etc, the Christmas Eve service was “a gift to the City of Cambridge” whereas the Advent Service was (and is) for the University.

Tickets for the Advent service are allocated to the colleges and to Kings alumni. In my one year there post-graduate I must have put my name in and I won a ticket in the lottery. I went alone knowing nothing about it. For the first time I understood why the church has an Advent season. The slow movement of the choir from darkness at the entrance (plus a few candles to see their music!) reaching the altar at the end of the service with increasing light made sense of the waiting for Christmas. (Lessons and music just as Christmas Eve.) It happened to be a perishingly cold day. That and the darkness and the acoustic of the vast space above us made it both magical and awe-inspiring.

Since then, I have found myself wanting churches to wait before getting into being Christmassy until very near to Christmas. Of course, if you have to fit in Nativity play, Toy service, Carol service(s), Christingle service(s) (three at our local parish church!) you are in danger of having to start even before Advent.

But Advent is for thinking about why Christ came so that we celebrate his birth not just as a pretty tale, some good meals and worry about presents but an earth-shattering event.

Margaret Clements