SYNONYMOUS with Christmas, the hugely popular and much visited ‘live’ crib at St Mary’s Church on Chapel Lane may not be there this year due to Coronavirus restrictions, however the installation of an ornate bauble along with outdoor crib is proving quite the talking point.
“Obviously Covid put an end to the live crib this year,” explained St Mary’s Administrator Fr Timothy Bartlett.
“Normally we have the live crib and school choirs which attract a lot of attention and visitors, people from all backgrounds visiting the city centre would come to see it. Because of the pandemic our risk assessment found that it wouldn’t be safe to have such an event.
“However we came up with a different idea. St Mary’s has an old crib built into the grotto in a small room and the figures there are from 1954. The small room is not Covid compliant either so we came up with the idea of bringing the crib outside so that people can visit.”
He continued: “We then thought that Christmas is about the joy of the birth of a child bringing a beautiful message of hope to the world. We thought well ‘how can we bring a little bit of hope to all of the people who will be in the city centre during Christmas and into the New Year?’ and we decided let’s put a bit of money and effort into making the garden as nice as we can with lights.
“We then thought that Christmas is about the joy of the birth of a child bringing a beautiful message of hope to the world. We thought well ‘how can we bring a little bit of hope to all of the people who will be in the city centre during Christmas and into the New Year?’ and we decided let’s put a bit of money and effort into making the garden as nice as we can with lights.
“We contacted a company who very helpfully put up four trees in our garden and a beautiful blue bauble. We hummed and hahhed with regards the bauble, was it a little bit irreverent for a grotto? When we saw pictures of it we thought it was a beautiful blue and blue is the colour of Our Lady and what an honour to her.
“As one of our parishioners said, ‘Fr, I’m sure Our Lady decorated her house when she could’, so we thought okay, let’s go with the bauble. We are keeping an eye on numbers and it is working out.”
Fr Bartlett said that Our Lady’s Garden and the St Mary’s Crib are dedicated to ‘Aid to the Church in Need’ which works to help hundreds of thousands of people who are displaced through war and conflict and those in need.
“Normally we would have school choirs outside the church but we are hoping next year, if we get back to some sort of normality and it is safe to do so, we can have the choirs back again and maybe some live animals back in the crib.
“Everyone is very welcome to see the crib and bauble, we are getting visitors from all backgrounds. From the Muslim faith, people from different Protestant churches, coming in for a moment and focusing on the crib in the busyness of the city centre and the busyness of life to just focus on the image of the crib at this time of year.”
