Christmas is brutal but I love the chaos that comes with it

THE rector of Henley with Remenham has shared his unconventional Christmas routine.

Father Jeremy Tayler splits his time between St Mary’s church in Henley and St Nicholas’s church in Remenham, where he leads services for the community.

He said preparations to decorate and organise the churches starts about six weeks before Christmas but he finds comfort in all of the “chaos”.

Fr Jeremy, 47, runs carol services for Rupert House School in Bell Street, St Mary’s Prep School in St Andrew’s Road and Shiplake College, as well as a carols by candlelight service and a traditional carol service with the choir of St Mary’s Church.

On Christmas Eve, he leads a family crib service as well as two editions of midnight mass and three Christmas Day services across the two parishes.

“It is very chaotic, especially the last 24 hours,” he said. “But it’s very fun and it’s lovely to welcome lots of people into church.

“We do the same things every year so there’s a fairly well practised pattern of service.

“There are a lot of people who help me and the St Mary’s choir is a big part of what we do and, in a way, they look after themselves.

“There are lots of great people who help with the practicalities, so it’s not me on my own.

“My responsibility is to make sure that the worship happens and I have to write sermons for all the services.”

Fr Jeremy, who lives at the Rectory in Hart Street, said he doesn’t have a system to writing his sermons, of which he prepares three, but finds a way to connect to what people are feeling in their own lives.

He said: “It takes a little bit of preparation. My normal congregation are pretty used to it and they hear me week in, week out but, at Christmas, you get people come in who won’t have heard it much before.

“It’s a question of being on top of what’s going on in the world, speaking about your own life and just trying to find a different angle.

“You need to get some of the theological meaning of it over but you also need to find a way to connect with where people are in their own lives.”

About 30 volunteers help with decorating and cleaning at both churches, including a group of students with learning difficulties from The Henley College.

Jobs include putting up the Christmas tree, which will go up this weekend.

Fr Jeremy said: “At St Mary’s we have the tree and I will have to put it up and we usually have children decorate it.

“We then have flower ladies who help with the arrangements so I don’t have to personally be involved with that. It really is a group effort.”

Fr Jeremy is married to Maura and they have two daughters, Blanche, 17, and Ginny, 15. Ginny is on the serving team at St Mary’s, where she takes on duties including the carrying of candles and preparation of the altar.

He said although he doesn’t have a preferred Christmas service, midnight mass brings him a special sense of joy.

Fr Jeremy said: “I go to Remenham to do what we call a ‘midnight mass’ at 9pm. Then I come back to St Mary’s and we have mass at 11pm. It’s crazy but we’re fairly used to it as a family.

“The thing about midnight mass is it’s dark and there’s the whole Christmas story about the light of the world and light in darkness and the narrative about Luke’s Gospel and the shepherds and the angel.

“All of that is at night so there’s something wonderful about midnight mass gathering in the dark. There’s something very atmospheric about it.

“There’s the joy of young lads coming out of the pub and there’s something so special about all of that.

“There are people who visit who I’ll never see again but the more the merrier as far as I’m concerned.

“On Christmas morning, we have an 8am Holy Communion at St Mary’s which is a bit brutal for me because going to bed after midnight mass is quite difficult.

“I won’t fall asleep until about 2am and then I have to be up again soon afterwards. But, once you’re up, you just get on with it and that’s quite a short and simple service.

“It’s great for people who are doing cooking and then there’s the main service at 9.30am with the choir and then I go to Remenham and do their 11.15am service.”

Fr Jeremy balances family duties with his wife, who will take on the majority of the Christmas dinner preparations.

The family sit down to a breakfast of rice pudding on Christmas morning, which is a Scandinavian tradition prepared by Mrs Tayler, who is Finnish.

Fr Jeremy said his children are used to the “unconventional” Christmas routine.

“The children have grown up with it,” he said. “I do the girls’ stockings when I come back from midnight mass. That works quite nicely because they’re both fast asleep and I need a winding-down activity anyway.

“I certainly fall asleep on the sofa in the afternoon but that’s probably not that unusual.

“I come home from the Christmas Day services at about 12.45pm and we probably won’t sit down until about 2pm and that goes on for quite a long time.”

He joked: “We normally do presents afterwards which is wicked.”

Fr Jeremy typically books a week off around February to recover from the intensity of his Christmas schedule. He relaxes by gardening at his home, cycling and swimming.

He was ordained as a deacon at St Paul’s Cathedral in London in 2015 and as a priest at St James’s Church in Sussex Gardens the following year. He studied at Westcott House, a theological college in Cambridge.

In his second year since his ordination, Fr Jeremy recalls a time when he was forced to stand in for the vicar at St John’s Wood Church in London, to lead their Christmas service.

He said: “The vicar turned completely green on Christmas Eve and he had an appalling stomach bug. I was landed with doing everything because he couldn’t do anything.

“Everything happened that needed to happen but you never know when life is going to throw you a curveball like that.”

He said his Christmas message this year will be to give people a sense of hope in dark times.

“Humanity has its dark side and its difficult side but I believe that God has stepped into the world and human life in a really vulnerable way and there is hope for all of us through that,” he said.

“We need to be attentive to the people around us who are in need and in trouble.”