The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

The oldest children, St John’s Group, will again be providing the “signposts” to the Christmas display in the Lady Chapel this year. We shall be constructing our own giant Advent calendars; four of them, one for each week in Advent, each with seven windows, for each day. The exterior will be the façade of a church (one, an 18th century one, may look familiar) but through the windows, behind the arcades and inside the doors you will see the stories appropriate to each week of Advent; in the first the Creation, the Fall, and the rest of the (abbreviated!) story of the Old Testament. Next is the story of St John the Baptist from mysterious conception to scandalous execution. In the third week we follow Mary from her birth to the Annunciation and finally (with a little licence) the story of the Nativity from start to shepherds. We hope you will enjoy looking behind the scene to some of the obscurer parts of the wider Christmas story and will be led on to the celebration in the Lady Chapel.

Moving into the Lady Chapel you will find the work of the youngest children, St. Matthew’s Group, in the decorated pictures of the characters in the Nativity “planted” among the greenery along the ledge behind the altar. You will also find a Jesse tree, hung with symbols produced by St. Mark’s and St. Luke’s groups. A Jesse tree is named from Isaiah 11. 1 “And there shall come forth a shoot out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots; and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.” It is a way of telling the story of God in the Old Testament and of connecting the Advent Season with the faithfulness of God across 4,000 years of history. The branch is a biblical sign of new life and therefore an appropriate symbol of Jesus, and the symbols we have chosen include the apple and serpent, the ark and rainbow, the ladder as well as crowns, stars, camels and many, many more. Please come and look at the children’s work and consult the key if in doubt about the story the symbol stands for!
Diana Finning and Andrew Penny