This week I got back in the swing of things. First, I uploaded Episode Two in Advent: a Season of Penitence & Preparation. Episode Two is the final episode in this Seasonal Video series and it brings me closer to achieving my post-retirement objective of a teaching video for every season on the Anglican Church Calendar.
Episode Two is focused on the Third Sunday in Advent, Fourth Sunday in Advent, and other traditions of Advent, including the Great “O” Antiphons for the final seven days in Advent and Lessons and Carols for Christmas Eve. The illustration at left is one of nine scenes in the life of John the Baptist, five on the front side and four on the back. Another scene from the same source included in Episode Two depicts St. John the Baptist baptizing a man in a wooden tub.
The final missing piece in the AIC Seasonal Video series, Christmas: The Nativity of Our Lord, is also nearing completion. The script and slides are complete, awaiting its soundtrack and final video editing. I hope to finish both episodes in September or early October. The series will be available in two episodes, each with historic art, much of which viewers may not have seen before. Episode One will cover the evolution of the Christmas tradition in the Western Church, Anglican traditions of Christmas, the two Collect, Epistle and Gospel readings for Christmas Day, plus the changes made for Morning and Evening Prayer and the Proper Preface for the Octave of Christmas. Episode Two will cover the First Sunday after Christmas Day, Second Sunday after Christmas Day and include discussion of the Twelve Days of Christmas tradition and information on the fourteen hymns or carols of Christmas in the St. Chrysostom Hymnal that are either not found in the venerable 1940 Hymnal or are arranged to different tunes. The Twelve Days of Christmas video series, with one episode for each day of the twelve days from Dec. 25th through Jan. 5th, will be reissued with new content and many new illustrations in December 2018 A.D. The changes will make the Twelve Days program consistent with the style and content of all the other Seasonal Video series. Episodes are, or will be, linked from the Digital Library page (with Podcasts linked from the Podcast Archive page).
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May God bless you in all that you do in His Name. Amen. Glory be to God of all things! Amen!
On this the 12th and final day of the Twelve Days of Christmas, Jan. 5th, the key words are GRACE & FAITH. The music is Hark! The Herald Angels Sing by Charles Wesley (1789 A.D.), played to the tune Mendelssohn.
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas, Jan, 4th, the key words are Glorifying God. The music for this episode in the AIC Video series, The Twelve Days of Christmas, is Good Christian Men, Rejoice, using John Mason Neal’s 1853 translation from the Latin carol, In Dulci Jubilo. It’s an arrangement frequently used in the background for street singers in movies, television and videos on Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
In the AIC Seasonal Video presentation, The Twelve Days of Christmas, the episode for the Tenth Day of Christmas – Jan. 3rd – the key word is COMMANDMENTS. The musical theme is a horn arrangement of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen.
Here we are just after the start of a New Year A.D. 2018, when the secular world is ready to turn to commerce and politics, but it’s still one of the Twelve Days of Christmas. For Jan 2nd, the Ninth Day of Christmas, the key word is ANGELS. The opening music for today’s video is — surprise, surprise! — Angels We Have Heard on High, with kudos to Edward Shippen Barnes for his pre-WWII arrangement of an old English Carol. The episode is filled with examples of Angels in Scripture and tradition.
The New Year begins with the Eighth Day of Christmas, when the key word is CHURCH. The musical theme is What Child Is This?, originally published by William Chatteron Dix in 1865 A.D. and set to the English folk tune Greensleeves.
On this the Seventh Day of Christmas, Dec. 31st, the theological key word is FAMILY. The theme music for today is Away in a Manger, attributed to James Murray (1887 A.D.). In this video, I demonstrate the meaning of the word based on Scripture from both the Old and New Testament and illustrated with paintings, icons, mosaics, photographs and stained glass windows from the 6th through the 20th Century.
For this the Sixth Day of Christmas, Dec. 30th, the key theological word is JOY. Not surprisingly, the opening music is Joy to the World, first published by the prolific hymn-writer Isaac Watts in 1719 A.D. as a song about the Second Coming, in this case played on modern electronic instruments. Joy to the World is Hymn No. 38 in the St. Chrysostom Hymnal, arranged to the tradition tune, Antioch, from a hymnal published in 1926 A.D.
For this the Fifth Day of Christmas, Dec. 29th, the key word is OBEDIENCE. The musical introduction is Cecil Francis Alexander’s carol for children, Once in Royal David’s City, written in 1848 A.D. For this video the tune is Unser Herrscher. Obedience means following the will of God, as both the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph did in the Nativity accounts in the Gospels.
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