Generation to Generation in the Feast of Lights

Feast of Lights

Receiving and renewing Christian tradition from generation to generation is a mark of the church, a trait that is strong in the common life of St. John’s. This year we will gather on January 6, as we have for decades, to mark the Epiphany of Christ in a Feast of Lights. When the Rev. John Barr was Rector of St. John’s, his assistant Barbara Bild and Acolyte Master Bill Woodruff produced the first Feast of Lights. Nell Barr started the tradition of the 12th Night Party, which features three cakes presented by the Wise Men. The pageant offers a progression for a child raised in the life of the church. They start as lambs of the stable, corralled into front pews, progress to the ministry of Shepherds and Angels, eventually serve as pages to the Kings, and then appear as the Apostles and contemporary ministers of God’s church in their high school years. 

The Apostles wear felt shields with appropriate symbols, probably sewn by Ruth Woodruff. The shields stay in folders, signed by the actor each year since 1982. Kevin Watt (Faxie’s son and a fraternity brother of Fr. Beasley’s) was St. Peter in 1987. Rhett Heyward (featured in last week’s generational article) took up the same role in 1991. Roger and Mary Katherine Keane (longtime director Ann Ruderman’s kids) occupied the Petrine role from 1997 through the year 2000. Roger still returns to St. John’s each year to serve as one of the Kings. Katherine Nauss was St. John in 1991; her son Smith Templeton took up the same role 20 years later. Connor Moore was St. Thomas in 2024; his mother Kristy Holstein had been St. Philip in 1991. Charlie Sterne played St. James the Less in 1982; his son Fletcher was St. Matthias in 2015. William Axson was St. Jude in 2007 and served as St. Joseph with his wife Ashleigh and infant daughter Emma portraying Mary and Jesus just last year.

If you can uncover a genealogy of some St. John’s generations in the apostolic signatures, there are many, many more names that don’t have a biological predecessor further up the column. We celebrate the continuity provided by families who have endured among us, but God’s continual addition of branches to the St. John’s family tree is even more significant. Owen Barker, only a couple of years into the life of St. John’s, was St. Philip in 2024, a big senior boy who accepted and was welcomed into the holy drama of the Feast late in his adolescence. The pageant has always been that way, an inclusive celebration of God’s saving work in every generation, right through our own. (I’d like to meet a boy named Elliott Nix, who signed himself first by this name and then as “(the Stuff)” in 2010.)

You can help keep the Feast of Lights and our other life-giving traditions going by your pledge for 2025. Your gift supports the work of the staff who make the Feast possible; a Director of Music, an Organist, and the Director of Family Ministries, the clergy, and our administrative staff, along with essential volunteers. Your gift lights, heats, and cleans our spaces, in which we gather for the preparations, the pageant, and the party. Costumes, cakes, and candles are purchased every year. Your giving has sustained a joyful community of children and youth who grow into mature disciples of Christ, serving in their adulthood in and through St. John’s and the other churches they may join. 

Make your pledge by November 10, when we celebrate God’s work among us over a meal after 10:30 worship. Nicholas 

Learn more about other important updates in the latest church newsletter: The Epistle – November 1, 2024

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