New Christmas event for St Chad’s Church in Pattingham…
For several years, St Chad’s Church has held in December, a successful Christmas Tree Festival, but in 2024 it held its very first ‘Follow the Star’ event.
It was a 3-day special community event over the weekend of 13th to 15th December 2024, where St Chad’s Church was full of decorated and illuminated stars of all sizes and colours, all created by villagers and their supporters from Pattingham.
On the Friday evening there was a provoking presentation using the church’s AV system by local amateur astronomer, Doug Bickley. He discussed, with the help of slides, one of the most famous Christmas stories – the Star of Bethlehem.
Many visitors Followed the Star to St Chad’s
The Follow the Star event in St Chad’s at the beginning of December 2024 attracted many visitors to see the ingenuity of individuals and organisations. The cover of the January Parish News showed St Chad’s West Window.
Brightly shone the stars in St Chad’s
Organisations and individuals came together just before Christmas to light up St Chad’s with their expertise at making stars in the Church’s Follow the Star festival-and it was even featured on BBC Television’s Midlands News, with Mike Coope being interviewed by Rebecca Wood.
There were 38 on view – on columns, on the pulpit and the Lady Chapel screen, by the altar and even on the font.
The event attracted visitors from the surrounding area as well as villagers.
Coupled with it was a talk on the Friday evening by astronomer Doug Bickley, attended by about 100 people.
He said astronomical evidence actually pointed to Jesus being born about 2 or 3 BC.
(taken from the articles which appeared in the January 2025 Parish News magazine.)
Photography by Mike Moss
Mike Coope made a video which is on YouTube.