Never on a (Easter) Sunday

By Bfpage (Own work)
[CC BY-SA 4.0],
via Wikimedia Commons

I hate going to church on the "big" holy days, like Easter and Christmas.

Well, to be precise, I hate going to my church on these days. And it's all because of those "welcoming" Sunday morning people.

I go to the evening service at my church (which is on a Saturday afternoon, because of historical reasons which are too silly - and slightly depressing - to go into here). I've been going to this service regularly for at least 5-6 years now. Before that, I attended several other services at the same church irregularly for a few years.

All told, I've been going to this church for almost 10 years - just not the Sunday morning service.

Weekend mornings and I don't get along. I work on a sleep deficit for most of the week, and I try to make up for that on the weekends. I can try to pull myself out of bed to attend something occasionally, but if I dare try to make a regular habit of it I start falling apart at the seems out of sheer exhaustion. So I stop doing it.

As a result, I don't go to church on Sunday mornings, but I force myself to make an occasional exception for "special events" - like Easter and Christmas. I can manage it for a couple of times a year, just not every week.

However, Easter and Christmas, being morning services, are pretty much the domain of the Sunday morning crowd. This isn't a problem - or at least, it shouldn't be. It should be a wonderful time of communing with the other members of my parish who aren't part of my regular congregation. A time where I can say "hi" to people I rarely see and bask in the togetherness that the season(s) bring(s).

Instead, without fail, someone from the Sunday morning crowd will take it upon themselves to "welcome" me to the church, as if I'm a passing stranger or a "Christmas Christian". There's nothing quite like being welcomed to make you feel like a stranger.

When I tell them I go to the Saturday afternoon service, this strange look comes over their face, as if they're completely stumped now. They were all ready to try to make me feel welcome to the church, being the complete stranger that I am, but now they don't know what to do with me.

Some of them keep on trying to act as if I might start coming to the morning service if they're just welcoming enough (like the other services don't count). Others say something like "Oh, well good to see you," and mutter something that barely passes as a conversation before they go to find a "real" stranger to welcome.

I hate it. This is my church, dangit - I shouldn't feel like a stranger. It's odd and disconcerting, and it has reached the point where I don't feel comfortable going to any service where the Sunday morning crowd are going to be there feeling all proprietorial. "Hi there, person I only see at Christmas, you are clearly someone who needs to be encouraged to come back to church, let me be the one who encourages you!"

No, go away.

There's every chance I've been going to this church longer than you have. Welcome me as a cousin you rarely see, not as a stranger to the family.

Last year, I even tried to shake things up by doing one of the readings at the Christmas morning service - surely it would look like I come to this church regularly if I'm up there reading a reading like I do it all the time (and I do, actually)? Nope. People still tried to engage me in the kind of polite conversation that is reserved for guests and strangers. "Thanks for doing us a favour, stranger" seemed to be the order of the day.

So, this year I'm going to do something different, and avoid my church on Easter and Christmas and go to a different church instead. If I'm going to be made to feel like a strange visitor, then I may as well be visiting a strange church.