‘Midnight Mass’: a guide for the perplexed

Get set for the wee small hours.

Jack Chisnall

Jack Chisnall is a former gag teller and Oxford Theology graduate, combining the two at Holy Fooling.

A boy concentrates hard as he holds one candle to another to light it.

A boy little a candle during a Mass in Greece.

Malcolm Lightbody on Unsplash.

For many people in 2024, Christmas is the one time of year that they might seek out a church service. As they survey their local parishes' banquet of offerings, ‘Midnight Mass’ (or ‘Midnight Communion’) may be one dish that jumps out to them.

But what is this strange midnight event, and where does it come from? Let’s dive in.

Quite straightforwardly, Midnight Mass is all the same words and actions from a Sunday morning Communion service - i.e., the bread and wine blessing, performed as per Jesus’ command during the Last Supper to “do this in remembrance of me”. Midnight Mass typically begins just before Christmas Day starts at midnight. You can expect a quiet, but poignant service, recalling the birth of Jesus - whom Christians regard as the world’s true king - born in the wee small hours, in a provincial backwater of first century Judea.

It is a very old tradition. Christians from the get-go would celebrate the great calendar days by holding ‘vigils’ - that is, by staying up all night for prayers and singing, and then conducting a communion service at dawn. In the late fourth century, a western pilgrim called Etheria writes about her visit to the middle east. Already, she records, Christians were doing special ceremonies for the Nativity (the feast day of Jesus’ birth), including a procession all the way from Bethlehem to Jerusalem in the middle of the night. Etheria notes that it takes longer than expected because some of the monks penitentialy refuse to wear shoes.

But the early Christians were quite particular about something else: the communion bit should only happen in daylight. They would always reserve that part of their celebration for the sunrise. But how could they develop their celebrations of Jesus’ birth - bearing in mind that tradition held he was born at midnight on the 25th December - with this ban on nighttime communion?

In 440, the Pope permitted a communion service beginning at midnight as a special ‘one off’ for Christmas. In fact, he allowed for three - one at midnight, one at dawn, and one at the usual midmorning. This was a welcome innovation, because Christians were already quite smitten with Christmas - they loved the festival, and many popular customs built up around it.

After the Protestant reformation, the Church of England stopped the Christmas tradition of a midnight service, preferring a morning communion on the 25th alone. But in the mid 19th century, amid a lot of general nostalgia for an ‘Olde English Christmas’, it returned, and has been a fairly consistent Anglican offering ever since.

If you attend a Midnight Mass this Christmas, you will be joining in with something that Christians have done for centuries, and which was a result of a fascination with the facts of Jesus’ birth. Christmas rituals did not spring from any pagan winter festivals, despite what fashionable critics might say. Rather - as you might notice yourself, sat in a pew on a dark winter night - they were animated by a completely new hope: the sense, however small and unexpected, that a great light had come near.

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11 November 2023

4 min read

The unusual power of silently remembering together

The collective silence of remembrance acts is unusual. Listen to its powerful lesson.

Christie Gilfeather

Christie Gilfeather writes about the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and its relevance to culture. She has a PhD in Biblical Studies from the University of Cambridge and is a parish priest in Hertfordshire.

Princes and army officers walk away from a war memorial while others look on.

Then Prince Charles at the Cenotaph war memorial, 2017.

Number 10, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Every year on the 11th of November at 11am, people across the UK stop whatever they’re doing and keep a two minutes silence in honour of those who have died in war. This collective silence provides the opportunity to reflect on the loss of life and cost of peace. It gives us the chance to consider the conflicts raging around the world today.

Collective silence is an unusual thing in our culture. There are few, if any, other opportunities for silence which are as widespread as the tradition at the centre of Remembrance Day. Silence is, however, a powerful tool in relation to suffering and death. It acts as a reminder that in the face of some horrors, there is simply nothing to say. Presence becomes all that we have to offer, because words simply cannot capture the depth of the sadness to which we bear witness. And we must bear witness to them.

No words are said. People stand alongside each other and bear witness both to the grief and to the light of hope represented by the flickering candle.

Remembrance Sunday is one part of the wider season of remembrance in the church. This season begins with the feast of All Soul’s, when the church gathers to remember by name those who have died.

A powerful tradition lies at the heart of All Soul’s services: the priest reads out a list of names of the dead. If you are grieving a loved one, it is a great relief to hear someone else say their name. Grief can be intensely lonely and easily forgotten by others. But the church promises not to forget, honouring the beloved memories of those missing from our communities on the feast of All Souls. In many churches, after the list of names is read a silence is held in which the congregation comes forward to light a candle in memory of their loved one. No words are said. People stand alongside each other and bear witness both to the grief and to the light of hope represented by the flickering candle.

The value of silence is easily lost in this world which prompts us to rush to speak about everything that is happening. The Bible, though, offers us examples of the power of times of silence and the wisdom that can emerge from them.

They did not speak, because this was not a place for words. They remained with him to bear witness to his suffering without trying to resolve it.

At the beginning of the book of Job in the Old Testament, we find the protagonist in the midst of disaster. Job has lost everything, his home, his livestock, his family and his health. When Job’s friends hear about what has happened to him, they seek him out to be with him amid his suffering. The story tells us that

‘They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great’.
There are no platitudes here. No hastily put together explanation of why this might have happened or what Job needs to do about it. The friends saw that Job’s suffering was ‘very great’ and they allowed their presence to be enough. They did not speak, because this was not a place for words. They remained with him to bear witness to his suffering without trying to resolve it. In the story this silence eventually gives way to unhelpful words, but it is striking, nonetheless.

We find another example of silence during grief in the New Testament. John’s gospel recounts the death of a friend of Jesus. Lazarus becomes ill and quickly dies, and upon hearing the news Jesus makes haste to join Lazarus’ sisters and bear witness to their pain. There is some dialogue in the story, but the most striking part of it comes when Jesus reaches the grave of his friend. The shortest verse in the Bible is found here. It simply says,

‘Jesus wept’.

At this point, Jesus doesn’t say anything. He simply weeps, moved as he is by the death of his friends and the grief of those around him. Jesus weeps, even though he knows that before long Lazarus will rise from the dead.

But Jesus does not rush to the surprise and joy of resurrection. Jesus’ silence and his weeping is an example of what it means to grieve well alongside others when they are hurting. In what is perhaps one of the purest expressions of the human condition, Jesus responds to the weight of loss and the fragility of life in his silent bearing witness to the loss of his friend.

When we bear witness to the suffering of others without seeking to fill it with our own explanations or opinions, we honour the loss that is before us.

Within the Christian tradition there are also many examples of protest and speech in response to injustice. Silence is vitally important, but at some point, it must give way to speech and action when questions about human dignity are at stake.

But in order to know how to engage in resistance to that which diminishes others, periods of silence are necessary. When we bear witness to the suffering of others without seeking to fill it with our own explanations or opinions, we honour the loss that is before us. That is at the heart of the national two-minute silence for Remembrance Day. In remembering those who have died in war, and considering the conflict that marks our world today, we bear witness to the fragility of the human condition. Out of silence, comes the resources to know how to speak with wisdom.