Church puts on summer nativity, carols and grotto to make up for 'missed' Christmas
It's beginning to look at lot like Christmas with a Sutton Coldfield church deciding to spread festive cheer – in June!
Having witnessed the heartbreaking impact of the pandemic at first hand, the Reverend Chris Dowd, from Wylde Green United Reformed Church says it's time to make people smile again.
And, after families were unable to fully join together at Christmas, he's decided that a perfect way to start spreading joy would be a delayed – or early – festive period.
As a result, on the weekend of June 26 and 27, the church, based in Britwell Road, will be staging a host of Christmas activities, including a service, nativity, carol singing, grotto and craft fair.
Reverend Dowd said: "We are going to have Christmas because we all missed it!
"Our plan is for a nativity, grotto, Christmas trees, angels, the whole thing!"
"We will be holding a craft fair too and one of the things we are hoping for is local businesses take part in that."
"We have a really big field, over an acre, so we want to help small businesses who have suffered during the pandemic to showcase their work for free.
"We are just hoping to have a really nice day. We will be singing carols on the field and, on the Sunday night, we will show a Christmas movie in the church.
"We will have a Christmas service on the Sunday morning too with, hopefully singing indoors, depending on government guidelines."
He added: "I just think we all need to be a little bit silly.
"The last year has been so serious, so incredibly sad for so many people.
"I got here for months before the first lockdown so it was a weird first year for me to say the least.
"We have had to do everything on zoom but have gained members by doing so, which has been lovely.
"But the heartbreaking thing is I've never done as many funerals as I have had to in my life."
"There have been so many sad times for our wonderful community.
"So anything we can all do to support each other and cheer each other up seems like a good idea.
"It's about time we had a bit of joy and that's what I want this to be about.
"There have been so many special times we have missed sharing – birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas – so if we can catch up some of them, that would be brilliant."
