It’s a big year for the annual Alice P. Taylor Christmas Candlelight Service.
As best as organizers can tell, the holiday tradition is observing its 100th year.
Though the ecumenical Christmas music service moves around between various downtown churches, this year the service will take place at First United Methodist Church, which for many years hosted the service exclusively.
The service is set for 4 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 7, and a reception will follow. The church is located near the corner of Second and Green streets in downtown Henderson.
Music selections will be performed by choral groups from Henderson County High School, South Middle and North Middle, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church organist/musician Jieun Kim Newland and soloists, including Anne Pritchett Nash, Alyssa Boyett, Takilah Marrero, Phillip Morgan, Paul Rigdon and Rachel Hobbs. Janet Barkley will lead the congregation in hymns, and harpist Emily Sights Fife will play reception music.
Musician Alice P. Taylor moved to Henderson from San Francisco in 1897 after she married a young local attorney named N. Powell Taylor. According to a 2009 article by Yesterday’s News columnist Frank Boyett in The Gleaner, her marriage brought to a close her professional operatic and concert career, but that certainly didn’t mean she stopped making music.
As early as 1903, Taylor was assisting with local organ recitals, and then followed with the 1924 formation of the Henderson Music Club, which organized recitals, pageants and concerts. Taylor was the first elected president of the club that eventually created an annual Christmas Candlelight Service.
Some believe the first Christmas Candlelight Service took place in 1931, and others think it was even earlier. Recent research indicated that Taylor organized the first service in her first term as Music Club president, which would make it a century old.
In 1951, the Henderson Music Club added Taylor’s name to the service to honor her. For five years, until her death in 1956, Taylor was honored at the service with a special seat adorned with a big red bow and a corsage from the Music Club.
The Henderson Music Club dissolved decades ago, but former club members, including Dianne Wham and Rebecca Lackey, kept it going for a long time. Other volunteers who had no connection to the club but possess a love for music and/or an appreciation for the event’s history and heritage have continued to organize it.
“Henderson has always had a unique base of musical talent, both chorally and individually,” said longtime Alice P. Taylor organizer and retired music educator Heather McCormick. “I love that the talent was recognized so long ago and that we have managed to keep doing this service for so long.”
She said that in the early years, the service opened with an extended pipe organ prelude, which is why the annual service rotated between the local churches that have that instrument.
“When I started with this project back in the 1980s, Dianne had been doing it all on her own for a quite a few years,” she said, noting that eventually it became simpler to have it at First Methodist where both she and Wham were church members.
But in a nod to the original intent, the service started “traveling” again in the early 2000s.
“It’s nice to have the community coming together in an ecumenical way to celebrate the season,” McCormick said.
Even a global pandemic in 2020 couldn’t interrupt the continuity of this holiday tradition. To keep the service going, organizers created a video and audio service featuring musicians far and near—including many music professionals with Henderson roots—that was broadcast on social media and WSON radio.
“Thanks to those who began and continued the tradition, the Alice P. Taylor Candlelight Service has become a beautiful, ecumenical, inclusive musical occasion enjoyed by hundreds,” McCormick said. “In the past few years, we have tried to maintain the standards set by Alice P. Taylor and former music club members of keeping the spirit of Christmas while we have broadened the sacred music genres.”
