Offaly churches use innovative methods to celebrate Christmas

With very strict guidelines in place for all public events due to Covid-19, the organisation of religious services this Christmas proved to be a major hurdle for local church leaders, at what is traditionally the busiest time of the year in the annual faith calendar.

Many religious congregations had to come up with innovative ways of ensuring that as many people as possible could attend church services, and none more so that the Ferbane Parish Council who operated a lottery system in the weeks leading up to Christmas, which local Parish Priest, Fr Peter Burke, hailed as “a great success.

Fr Burke explained that the Parish Council left boxes in each of the three churches in the parish for a number of weeks leading up to Christmas and invited parishioners who wished to attend Christmas services to place their name and contact details and the time of their preferred Mass in the box.

“It all went very smoothly,” he said “and while we weren’t able to accommodate everyone I think we did a good job in catering for most people, but I think a lot of older parishioners opted not to put down their names but to join us online.”

Ferbane Parish celebrated eight Christmas Masses at the three churches in the parish, and they came up with some very innovative ways of accommodating extra parishioners, such as broadcasting Masses from the main Immaculate Conception Church to families who came along in their cars and parked in the grounds of the church.

“We also managed to broadcast Christmas Mass to 50 additional parishioners in High Street Hall, directly across from Ss. Patrick & Saran Church in High Street, and that was great,” said Fr. Burke.

Ferbane Parish has a webcam installed in the main Church and live streams all Masses, which Fr Burke says has been “a great source of comfort and connection” for his parishioners. “It is not ideal, but please God with the vaccine on its way, we can look forward to a return to some sort of normality in 2021,” he says.

Meanwhile, the Rector of the Tullamore Union of Parishes, Rev. Issac Delamere, says he had advised his parishioners in advance that they should perhaps “consider worshipping online” rather than attend in person at the Christmas services at St Catherine’s Church of Ireland in Hophill, particularly if they were in any of the vulnerable categories for Covid-19.

“I think quite a few people took us up on that advice, although we did have good crowds at all our services,” said Rev. Delamere “and our Family Crib Service on Christmas Eve was very popular.”

The Union of Parishes, which encompasses Tullamore, Clara and Tyrrellspass, did not have any streaming services up to two months ago, when a webcam was installed in St Catherine’s in Hophill. “Prior to that we used the webcam from Lawless Funeral Home, but even with the webcam we are still not reaching members of our congregation who live in rural areas and don’t have access to broadband, but it’s the best we can do under the circumstances” said Rev. Delamere.

At the moment, the only service which is live streamed to parishioners via webcam is the Sunday morning service, but it was decided to also live stream the 11.30am Christmas Day service, which proved to be very popular. All Church services operated on a ticket system.

“We could only accommodate 50 people in St. Catherine’s, and with social distancing requirements at St. Brigid’s in Clara we could only allow 35 people to attend, so we decided to have two services in Clara in an effort to accommodate everyone, and they were at 9pm on Christmas Eve and 10am on Christmas Day,” said the Church of Ireland Rector.

While he acknowledged that there were “a lot of disappointed parishioners” in Clara who could not attend Christmas services due to the strict Covid-19 guidelines, Parish Priest, Fr Joe Deegan, said it was “of huge benefit” that places of worship were allowed to remain open for private prayer under the current Level 5 restrictions.

“With a cap of 50 parishioners at each of our Christmas services, it was unfortunately not possible to accommodate everyone, and we had to adopt a strict ticket policy, but I think we probably had a few more than expected at some of our Masses, and then at other Masses, such as the 8.30am on Christmas Day in Clara, we would have had room for more people.”

Clara Parish live streamed their 9pm Christmas Eve Mass from Horseleap and also their 11.30am Mass from St Brigid’s Parish Church in Clara, and Fr Joe Deegan said many families in the parish tuned into both Masses from their own homes.

Fr Deegan expressed the hope that the practice of families participating in Mass from their own homes might result in a return of family prayer time. “There is little or no prayer in family homes at the moment, so perhaps an upshot of the pandemic could be the return of families engaging in some prayer time together” he said “and wouldn’t that be a great positive.”

Parish Priest of Tullamore, Fr Joe Gallagher, admitted he found it “very hard” to witness the long queues of people who formed outside the Parish Centre on Monday, 21 December, in the hopes of getting a ticket to attend one of the Christmas Masses, as he knew many parishioners were going to be disappointed.

“We could have given out at least four times more tickets than we did, but we had to adhere to the public health guidelines, and I think people were very understanding, and we were just delighted to be able to celebrate public Masses for Christmas,” he said.

All Christmas Masses in Tullamore were live streamed to parishioners, and Mass from Durrow Church was also live streamed for the first time, which was very well received. “We got a lot of lovely comments from people who tuned in, including from local people living abroad, so that was a nice boost.”

Fr Gallagher said it was “ vitally important” that places of worship were left open for private prayer, and he said there has been “a steady stream” of parishioners into the Parish Church in Tullamore throughout the week.

“I suppose we never realised the significance of so many things in our lives, including being able to go to Mass, until this pandemic struck, so maybe there are lessons for all of us to learn,” he said.