St Cuthbert's Church in Pateley Bridge hosts Nativity Festival to celebrate Advent

The Nativity Festival took place at St Cuthbert’s Church last weekend with a number of events to celebrate advent and Christmas.

On Saturday, a variety of small nativity scenes were on display inside the church.

People brought in crib sets and figures from all over the world, including Nigeria, Malta, Equador and Italy and they were all put together to tell the Christmas story.

Visitors were treated to tea, coffee, cake and mince pies, as well as a number of stalls and a tombola, helping to raise money for the work of the Parish.

On Saturday evening, there was a ‘come and sing carols’ service where people were invited to go along, have a drink and sing Christmas carols together.

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Jane Spooner, Licensed Lay Minister, said: “We decided that we wanted to do something different this year for our Parish.

“The festival was a chance to celebrate advent and we wanted the emphasis to be on the Christmas story.

“We asked people to bring small crib scenes that meant something to them and when you asked people about what they had brought, they all had a story to tell.”

On Sunday morning, there was a special church service and there are now three prayer stations within the church for those residents who want to remember someone or have some quiet time over the festive period.

Margaret Mitchell, PCC Treasurer, said: “Throughout Covid, the community were very generous in the way that they supported the work of the church, both financially and the donations to the foodbank and we were quite overwhelmed and staggered by people's generosity at that time."

Jane added: “We would like to say a massive thank you to everybody who supported us, either by working hard or for just coming along and taking part.

“It was a lovely weekend and the icing on the cake was that we raised money to help fund the work of the church.”

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