St. Martin-In-The-Fields,
Every Christmas Eve,while I am still filling my kids’ stockings or recovering from holiday parties, a ritual keeps me sane during the hectic holiday season.
As midnight approaches and my family sleeps, I putter, enjoying a glass of wine, stuffing gifts into stockings, and admiring the tree with my nocturnal cat by my side. During these solitary moments the sound of traditional carols plays in the background—usually Sussex Carols conducted by Sir Neville Marriner from St Martin-In- the-Fields. This spiritual musical ritual is unplanned— one that happens involuntarily like taking a deep breath and filling my lungs with oxygen.
I left the Catholic Church a long time ago, a few years after my first confession when I started to question aspects of the Church I could not understand. Yet, I still love the holy music of Christmas (Gregorian chants are my favorite-Named for Pope St. Gregory the Great,these chants has been sung in monasteries, convents, cathedrals, and churches throughout the centuries) especially on Christmas Eve when it’s existence is more subliminal than concrete, an almost-unconscious presence like Dickens’s Ghost of Christmas Past. Having been raised by Irish Catholics (my grandfather attended mass almost daily) I have this music in my heritage.
In the 1970’s, In the Bleak Midwinter filled both my mother’s ginger-scented kitchen and my adolescent brain with joy, but now evokes memories of a sad family Christmas Eve in 1980, four days before my father died and left my mom a widow at 50.
In the early 60’s, I absorbed the Academy’s Stille Nacht as my cousin, sisters and I baked cookies at my Grandmother’s upstate New York home — Baroque carols Sir Marriner and St-Martin-In the Fields now spinning off an ancient turntable as we smeared green-frosting onto gingerbread men.
Because of these memories, I was excited to make a side trip to St Martin-in-the Fields located in Westminster during a ten-hour-layover in London last March, around St Patrick’s Day .
Needing to make good use of the few hours in London, one of my favorite cities, I debated whether to explore Westminster Abbey and then cross the south side of the bridge for views of the Thames, or go onto Trafalgar Square. The TV news in the airport had showed London police boats doing complex security maneuvers on the river which made me decide to skip that area. I chose the walk to Trafalgar Square in hopes of window shopping and enjoying a relaxed dinner before my flight to Sofia, Bulgaria.
Life is what happens to you when you are planning it so the cliche goes. Feeling undecided between Westminster Abbey and Trafalgar Square, the St. Martin’s Lane sign appeared overhead as I strolled through the festive London streets. The sudden apperance of this lane cleared up any doubts on which destination to choose. Literally, a sign from above.
I ignored the raucous St Paddy Day crowds filling Trafalgar Square as dusk rolled in. Instead of joining the crowds, I would visit the illustrious St Martins-In-the-Fields, located “between God and humanity, the wealthy and the destitute, culture and commerce,” and give homage to the sacred home of my favorite Christmas Eve music — a Spontaneous Pilgrimage for an Ex-Catholic. Finding the spirit of Christmas in person, in March no less, drew me towards the church.
I arrived just in time for the 5 pm Choral Evensong service, one of rich vocal music. Outside Irish tunes and green-filled parades took over the Square and permeated the Church walls, yet no one inside seemed to notice.
Within hours, London would experience a terrible attack on the south side of Westminster Bridge, the same place where I almost explored on that evening layover on a cold March night.
This near-brush with terror was too close a call for this traveler; the choice I made to visit St Martin in the Fields, rather than Westminster Bridge, seemed ironic and fateful. I could have been one of those pedestrians if my layover had been a few hours later. Instead I chose to visit a sacred church a to relive Christmas memories in the spring time.
A safer haven than St Martin’s I can’t imagine.
Some History:
No official reference to a church on the site of St Martin’s exists until Norman times, when in 1222 a dispute was recorded between William, Abbot of Westminster, and Eustace, Bishop of London on the Bishop’s authority over the church. The Archbishop of Canterbury decided in favour of the abbot and St Martin’s, then surrounded by fields, appears to have been used by the monks of Westminster.
Around 1542, Henry VIII, as ruthless with the monks as with his wives, built a new church and extended the parish boundaries to keep plague victims from being carried through his palace. This was enlarged in 1607 at the cost of Prince Henry, the son of King James I. This church was pulled down in 1721 to be replaced by the current building.
