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We offer daily services and a creative programme of talks, events and concerts. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate.
Come and celebrate the hope and light that Christmas brings each winter
St James’s hosts inclusive services and a cultural programme. We seek to be a welcoming space for people to reflect, create and debate.
St James’s is a place to explore, reflect, pray, and support all who are in need. We are a Church of England parish in the Anglican Communion. This is a place for everyone who’s wondering about life’s big questions and striving for a better world.
We host a year-round creative programme encompassing music, visual art and spoken word, drawing on St James’s rich cultural history including artists, writers and musicians Mary Beale, Mary Delany, William Blake, Ottobah Cugoano and Leopold Stokowski.
We try to put our faith into action by educating ourselves and speaking out on issues of injustice, especially concerning refugees, asylum, earth and racial justice, and LGBTQ+ issues.
We aspire to be a home where everyone can belong. We’re known locally and globally for our unique history and beauty, as well as faith in action, creativity and the arts, and a commitment to social and environmental justice.
We strive to be a Eucharist-centred, diverse and inclusive Christian community promoting life in abundance, wellbeing and dignity for all.
St James’s Piccadilly has been at the heart of its community since 1684. We invite you to play your part in securing this historic place for generations to come.
It costs us £3,500 per day to enable us to keep our doors open to all who need us
Your donation will help us restore our garden in Piccadilly as part of The Wren Project, making it possible for us to welcome over 300,000 people from all faiths and walks of life seeking tranquillity and inspiration each year.
St James's Church 197 Piccadilly London W1J 9LL
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Assistant Curate, Mariama Ifode-Blease, looks at Christmas afresh.
Christmas. You know how the song goes: “It’s the most wonderful time of the year. There’ll be fleeing, and packing, and running and hiding. It’s the most wonderful time of the year”.
As we may superficially see it, from a London perspective, Christmas is perfectly wrapped. The streets are beautifully decorated. The highly creative window displays of our local ‘corner shop’, with its instantly recognisable ‘eau de nil’ brand, brings people to a stop. Christmas TV is serving up some long-awaited treats, and the winners of Strictly and the World Cup have finally been crowned. Some of us are ready, and some (namely, me) are in denial that the 25th December is upon us again, and so soon. The last time I checked, there was a heatwave, and I was dashing to put my phone in the freezer after making the mistake of leaving it outside for all of two minutes.
Christmas trees adorn our public squares and sacred places alike. Train, coach and plane tickets are bought, and family reunions planned. Christmas can be beautiful, and glitzy, and indulgent. Christmas can also be complicated, edging between celebration and truth-seeking, and set against a backdrop of rising danger. The wonder of Christmas is that, though the story at its heart may not be held as a faith belief by many, its traditions have transcended heritages and inheritances, so that families of all faiths and none still gather and share in food and drink and gifts. Christmas is an extraordinary gift to humankind in the light of how we can be to one other during the fading 51 weeks of the year.
I write this a few days after a despicable article was published by a well-known television presenter about a woman. It was beyond the pale. What the article suggests is the humiliation of a woman, beginning with her nudity, a parade, all in public, of course, while waste matter discharged from the bowels are hurled at her as crowds shout ‘shame’. The subject of the article was a woman of mixed heritage. As a woman, and as a black woman, and as a priest who believes in the dignity of all people, especially women (and I include transwomen here), I must mention this reprehensible and frightening publication. Why? Because this is about us. This is about our society at Christmas. When the light from the manger-birth radiates out beyond the stable, what does it show? We must not fail to see that shoots that are watered by deep-seated misogyny and hatred can only lead to fleeing, and packing, and running and hiding. The family of the Christ-child knew that over 2,000 years ago, and we know it to still be true today. Is it the most wonderful time of the year? For some, yes, but not for all.
Those with more experience than me tell us that incidences of domestic violence are up around this season. It is a scary time for many, and that is more in line with the reality of the story we celebrate and bring to the fore at this time of year. Christmas, like no other season, brings up the past and present in a heady mix of unresolved grief and joy in expectant gatherings. We remember those who are not here, but the memories of whom remain. We celebrate with those we love the excesses of the season. We carry the weight of the unsaid and the unapologetic. The baby who lies innocent among the livestock and feed, and the three men who will bring gifts, and the crowned man who will plan the massacre of the innocents: role models and portrayals that take us between ‘kids jingle belling and parties for hosting’ to the fleeing, and packing, and running and hiding.
We approach Christmas, at the end of a year that has brought so much suffering, and to so many: from the cost-of-living crisis to reckless fiscal roulette, to personal trauma and tragedy, to the war in Ukraine, to all that has made this year what it has been. Yet in all of this, Christmas stands as the constant; a constant reminder of the truth of who we are and how much we are worth to a divine creator. God came down to earth at Christmas, choosing to take on human flesh, to experience life here on earth, to show us that, between the stable entrance and our lived reality, whatever this year has meant for us, and whatever Christmas brings up and means for us, God is here, with us. God makes love known so that we can make the world know love. How will 2023 tell our story of what God’s love has done for our being, and what it can do for the world?
