Christingle

THE MEANING OF CHRISTINGLE

Traditionally the Christingle service is held on or close to the first Sunday in Advent and marks both the start of the church year and the start of the Christmas season. During the service everyone is presented with a Christingle and the collection is given to a local or national Children’s Society to help support children facing violence, neglect or poverty in their daily lives. See Services or see under recent news for the time and details of this service.

If you would like to join us at the service or get involved making christingle’s for the service, please keep an eye out for dates on the Diary section of the web, face book or join our mailing list (see above).

 A little history … a christingle is a symbolic object and consists of:

• An orange representing the world
• A red ribbon around it representing the blood of Christ
• Dried fruits (or sweets!)skewered on four cocktail sticks pushed into the orange, representing the fruits of the earth and the four seasons; and
• A lit candle pushed into the centre of the orange representing Jesus Christ as the light of the world.

(The base of the candle is wrapped in tinfoil. This is purely functional)

The story of the Christingle is that there were three children, who were very poor, but wanted to give a gift to Jesus, like the other families at church were doing. The only nice thing they had was an orange, so they decided to give him that. The top was going slightly green, so the eldest cut it out and put a candle in the hole.

They thought it looked dull, so the youngest girl took her best red ribbon from her hair and attached it round the middle with toothpicks. The middle child had the idea to put a few pieces of dried fruit on the ends of the sticks. They took it to the church for the Christmas mass, and whereas the other children sneered at their meagre gift, the priest took their gift and showed it as an example of true understanding of the meaning of Christmas.