Salute the Happy Morn

 

The link for this week's live-streamed Sunday morning service is here

The link for the live-streamed Christmas Eve service is here

Ed. Note: Thanks to our clerk of session for this Christmas morning post.

My Favourite Christmas Hymn is, "Christians Awake, Salute the Happy Morn".

Here is the story of how it became so special to me.

 

One of my loveliest Christmas memories took place in the late 1960's when I was the assistant house mother at Dr. Barnardo's in Canterbury.

It was Christmas Eve and so the house parents, who were Anglicans, took the older children to the early Christmas Eve service at the Cathedral while I stayed home with the younger ones and got them off to bed. 

When the other children arrived home, they got themselves off to bed and I was then free to go to the Methodist Church that I attended at that time, for the 11:00 pm service.

It was a beautiful service and it was timed so that the last hymn was sung just after midnight (now Christmas morning) & that hymn was, "Christians AwakeSalute the Happy Morn."

It just felt right to me at that time and really touched my heart.

After all our Christmas greetings to one another, we came out of church and it had just begun to snow, it was almost magical and as I walked home alone, through the now quiet city streets, that just a few hours earlier had been all of a bustle with shoppers buying last minute gifts, up through the city's West Gate, there was a really quiet peace. I can't explain it but all seemed right with the world, right at that moment, it was Christmas and Christ was born!

The words of this hymn are very meaningful to me and still fill my heart with hope, peace, joy and love, a real hymn of praise for Christ's birth.