On Sunday, December 18, 2011, St. Steven’s Cathedral Choir, under the direction of Dimitrios Antsos, presented an Advent concert – Mary: Hymns of Praise to the Most-holy Virgin Mother of God – in the church immediately following the Divine Liturgy.  The program included arrangements by the renown composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, the early twentieth-century Saint Nektarios of Aegina, and contemporary musicians Norman H. Mamey and Michael G. Farrow.  The choir was joined by the students of the Sunday school in a chorus of praise to the “Lady worthy of all honor,” set to the tune of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.”  The e.ntire congregation joined in the singing of “Silent Night” as everyone received their blessing and exited the church.

Following a delicious luncheon, the Sunday school children continued the festivities with their own presentation: a manger scene with Joseph, Mary, shepherds and angels watching over the new-born Savior as a narrator read Luke 2: 8-14, perhaps better-known as the “Linus monologue” from A Charlie Brown Christmas.  All the students in attendance were on the stage and following the manger scene began singing a popular hymn to Saint Nicholas, “O Kto Kto,” which was apparently heard loud and clear because he entered the social hall with bells ringing and joined the children on the stage to distribute hugs and gifts and take photos. 

Red string on the tables was in observance of the Serbian custom on Children’s Day where parents lovingly tie the hands of the children, loosening them with an exchange of gifts.  The custom of tying symbolically links the past with the present, parents with children, and reflects the Church’s similar linking when it commemorates the Holy Forefathers and Prophets of the Old Covenant on the two Sundays before the Nativity Feast, the birth of the New Covenant.