The old singer watched as the happy crowd left the cathedral. The Bishop came over to him and shook his hand.
“I didn’t think it would be like this, it was just an old tradition.”
“Yes, but a wonderful one, you would go round the town singing carols and using them to tell the Christmas story. I just brought it inside.”
“But it was wonderful, will you do it next year?”
“And the next, and others will do it as well, soon there will be carol services everywhere. It was once your family tradition, now it will be everybody’s.”
In 1880 Edward Benson organised the first service of Nine Lessons and Carols in Truro Cathedral. Partly based on a local tradition of singing various carols around the city on Christmas Eve, it is considered the predecessor of the carol services now held and enjoyed throughout the world.
This is written in response to the Carrot Ranch December 3, 2020, prompt: In 99 words (no more, no less), write a story that includes family traditions. Go where the prompt leads! I have, of course, gone back in time to the creation of many family traditions,
I think he was the father of the writer EF Benson (Mapp & Lucia novels), AC Benson (Cambridge essayist and author of Land of Hope & glory), and RH Benson (Anglican priest who converted then climbed the Catholic church hierarchy and wrote the extraordinary dystopian novel Lord of the World). What an amazing family!
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A remarkable family indeed, there were also two daughters who were pioneers of women’s enducation.
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What a lovely tradition to bring inside. Thanks, Gordon!
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And who doesn’t enjoy a carol concert, this was where they began.
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Let’s hope for a healthy renewal of this, all in person, for 2021!
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