Merry Christmas to the NewGathering community

Christmas began early for me this year - I served as a deacon at our parish's 3 pm Vigil mass.  It's the so-called "children's mass" - the children's choir sang, and the priest called the children up during the homily to sit on the sanctuary steps; he then engaged them in the homily.  As it is every year, it was by far the most crowded mass of the year for us - there were easily three times the number of worshipers that we would get at our most well-attended Sunday mass.  We had two overflow rooms set up with closed circuit televisions and probably could have used more space.

In past years, before the archdiocese put its foot down on the practice, we would schedule Christmas masses at 1 pm and at 3 pm on Christmas Eve, and both would be very well-attended.  I think 3 pm is the earliest we're permitted to have a Christmas mass now.  It's a shame; I'd rather bend a liturgical best practice to meet people where they are, and it's pretty clear that where at lot of them are is, they don't want to go (or find it difficult to make it) to church on Christmas but are willing to do so on Christmas Eve. 

Who are all these additional people who showed up this afternoon?  It was a different demographic than our usual Sunday crowd.  Our typical congregation skews older.  Today, besides all the children with young parents, there were a lot of high school and college age kids, and also young adults.  Here are my completely-unsupported-by-evidence takes on this:

• There are quite a few people with attachments to the parish who come irregularly or seldom throughout the year but make a point of coming on Christmas.  A lot of people, especially my generation and older, still associate Christmas with the family going to church
• The high school kids frequently don't come throughout the year because they don't want to, and parents decide it's not a battle they want to fight.  (I probably should try harder not to be judgmental about that; I think it's a battle committing some resources to).  But the parents decide that, on Christmas, it's a battle worth fighting
• The college kids are away throughout most of the year; when they're home, their parents are likely to let college kids figure out the attending-church stuff for themselves; and college kids, being more mature, are more likely than their high-school-age siblings to embrace family obligations like going to mass with the family on Christmas
• Some of the young adults don't live in this area but are visiting grandpa and grandma, who are parishioners, for the holidays.  Besides, it's an excuse to show off their very young kids in their Christmas church finery.
• Some of the young adults do live in this area and decide to cross our threshold for Christmas.  We're glad to have them

Why are they more willing to go to Christmas Eve mass than mass on Christmas day?  Having talked to quite a few parishioners this afternoon, I think it's mostly logistics.  Their family obligations are exhausting.  The younger ones try to see both sets of in-laws.  The older ones try to see as many of the kids and grandkids as they're able.  Most of the people I spoke with today were going to one family gathering this evening, and another on Christmas day (or were hosting one or the other, or even both).

There is a midnight mass, which I don't stay up for, and a couple more masses in the morning - I'm scheduled to play the piano at the late-morning mass tomorrow.  After that, it's a matter of cooking like a crazy person for our Christmas dinner.  And then my folks will be over this weekend, so we're not off the hook yet for holiday preparations.