Last year John and I greeted the New Year at St Bernard’s, Reidsdale where the population of bats in our vestry roof far outweighs the number of people in this tiny hamlet just south of Braidwood. This year we marked the turn on the year in the City of Lights, population 2 million. On New Year’s Eve 2009 we sat in deck chairs under some black wattle trees, drank chilled wine and watched the Monga mist come over the hill. We were tucked up in the nave of our church well before midnight.
This year we drank hot wine (vin chaud) in a café next to Notre Dame with a Swiss artist and her husband, then wandered across to St Gervais to join the nuns and monks for their vigil service. It was an equally beautiful way to watch the turning of a year: chants, readings, hymns, carols (familiar tunes bent into French words), and towards midnight a sustained litany. At each petition the assembée sang Kyrie eleison (Lord have mercy). Of all the things we sang that night this was the best, the strongest, our most harmonious effort. The simplest too, I guess. But it will always stay with me. At midnight the bells rang out and we sang the Gloria. The first food of the year was holy bread and wine. Back in our studio we drank champagne and ate French cheese with our friends. We went to bed at 3 am, knowing that we are truly and unaccountably blessed.
On France 24 the next day we find that the New Year fireworks were cancelled in Paris “for security reasons”. And that in Alexandria twenty one Christian Copts were killed and scores of others injured attending their New Years’ Eve vigil. Kyrie eleison.
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