Christmas Eve Reservations Canceled

Christmas Eve Reservations Canceled

13 Dec 2023 | Posted by: chadmin

Pastor’s Letter for December 17, 2023

Dear friend,

I am canceling the reservations for this year’s Christmas Eve 4 pm Mass. The last several years we did reservations through the Eventbrite online scheduling service for the Christmas Eve Masses. This started with the Covid pandemic, but continued as a way to provide some predictability and ease for both the parish staff and our parishioners in attending Christmas Eve Masses. Now that the pandemic exemptions are over, we can no longer offer a Mass earlier than 4 pm. This consolidates many parishioners who want to attend the same Mass. Since I had so many positive comments about the reservation process in the past, I hoped that doing pew reservations for the 4 pm Mass would ease some of the crowd around the 4 pm Mass. The exact opposite took place. I think we almost crashed Eventbrite on Monday with our church pews all reserved in about 10 minutes!

One of the hardships that scheduling pews alleviated was the frustration about not finding a place to sit in church on Christmas Eve. We certainly don’t want a feeling of frustration, competition or lack of charity on one of the most holy and peace-filled days of the year. In trying to prevent this, the scheduling of pews created the same kind of frustration, and even lack of charity, once the pews were fully reserved. I certainly don’t want any St. Philomena Parishioner feeling there is no place for them in their home church. I had planned for this to be the last test year of reservations to see if it was worth continuing in the future. It is clear to me with almost two weeks to Christmas, that this is not the best process for our community this year.

For those who set aside time to schedule a pew, I am sorry for having wasted your time. I truly hoped this would work well for the whole community. We will do our best to communicate that no pews are reserved for the 4 pm Mass and pray that everyone who did reserve a pew receives the message before Christmas. Like in the past, we will reserve a few pews for the Eucharistic Ministers and Lectors. We will return to having the doors unlock on Christmas Eve at 3 pm for parishioners to enter church. There are about 700 seats in the church and we will have about 400 chairs in the Parish Center Banquet Room. We have a large screen and clear audio in the Banquet Room to accommodate those who can’t fit in the main body of the church.

I am sorry for any hardship this process caused those who received a reserved pew, or for those who felt turned away from church for Christmas. In reality, we simply cannot host all our 1,400 families at one Mass and there is probably no best way to accommodate everyone wanting to come. While the 6 pm Mass will not be as busy as the 4 pm, the church is typically full for that Mass. Seating in the church for the 7:30 pm and Christmas morning Masses will be more accommodating. Thank you for your understanding and please don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have any concerns.

God bless,

Father David