A Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols
St Thomas Church, 5th Ave, New York

Midnight Mass from the Vatican 2024
Pope Francis' last Midnight Mass
With commentary in English

When we featured 13-year old Malakai Bayoh some weeks ago, we had one of the biggest reactions ever on New Pilgrim Path.  We revisit him today with Aled Jones, himself a former boy soprano,and now a regular presence on  the immensely popular BBC programme, Songs of Praise.

THE OXEN
​by Thomas Hardy

​THE OXEN
by Thomas Hardy

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
“Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.
 
We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
To doubt they were kneeling then.
 
So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
“Come; see the oxen kneel,
 
“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.