Claire House to host first Liverpool carol concert to spread festive joy

Claire House Children’s Hospice is hosting its first Liverpool Christmas carol event this December.

A Christmas Carol Concert will be held at St John The Evangelist Church in Knotty Ash next month, along with the hospice’s usual Carols & Candles service at Christ Church in Port Sunlight.

The hospice – which was awarded Charity of the Year at The Guide Liverpool’s inaugural Heroes awards held at the Titanic Hotel last week – says it’s really excited about its first ever city concert.

Events fundraiser Rachel Handley says:

“For more than a decade now, Carols & Candles has been a sell-out event in the Wirral. It’s a wonderful way to start the season every year with carols and festive readings in a packed church, while raising vital funds for our charity.

“We’re thrilled to be launching our first Christmas Carol Concert in Liverpool.

“The city has a remarkable spirit of generosity and community and, because have a Liverpool site in West Derby, we knew it was the perfect place.”

Bells Lewers, who has organised carol concerts across the UK for the last decade in aid of Claire House, says it won’t just fill people full of festive cheer, it will support their mental health and wellbeing too.

She says:

“There’s something really comforting about carols. They evoke memories from childhood, and they bring up associated moments from family gatherings, from Christmases past.

“Everyone has a favourite, an opinion on what carols mean to them, and when I’m planning the Carols & Candles programme, it’s as much about the feeling I want to give the audience as about the familiarity of pieces that they already know, whether through joy or bringing a tear to the eye.

“There’s nothing that gives you a boost quite like listening to carols out of season. I have to admit to being slightly Christmas obsessed – I change my professional and personal email signature to Jingle Bells… enough said!”

Credit: Fotopia Photography Claire House Christmas Carol Concert — Credit: Fotopia Photography

She goes on:

“It’s well known that singing releases dopamine and endorphins, those feel-good chemicals that make you happy, as well as simply taking your mind off worries. It can also tamp down the cortisol levels, the stress hormone in your blood stream, and reduce depression.

“It’s like practicing mindfulness but with sound on!”

Bells, from Chester, first went to Claire House with the idea of a carol singing concert in 2012 after having lost a friend who’d introduced her to the charity and the work it did.

She says:

“I came up with the idea in his memory, realising most of us grown-ups didn’t get to actually sing carols anymore. I wanted to put the joy back into the season and highlight what phenomenal work Claire House did in that community by association.

“I based the event on the more traditional ‘nine lessons and carols’ format, but with a children’s charity in mind it felt right to make it more about being relaxed and celebrating family and a child’s joy of Christmas.

“The readings are more relaxed than religious, and done by Claire House staff, families and friends. In between those we have choir performances, and I round it out with audience carols, boosted with the choir and some serious descant singing!

“Ten years on, we’re going strong and they’re a sell-out every year. It seems to be a collaborative event of the utter joy that Christmas music brings to both the performers and our cherished audience.”

Bells says she’s recently learned that there’s a tiny organ in the ear – the sacculus – which reacts to the frequencies created by singing which can create an immediate sense of pleasure, ‘regardless of whether the sound is deemed good or bad by the listener’: “So you don’t even have to be a great singer to feel the benefits.”

Claire House’s carol concerts are:

Carols & Candles on Tuesday, December 2 at Christ Church, Port Sunlight. Doors open at 6.15pm for a prompt start, and tickets are £12.50.

A Christmas Carol Concert is on Tuesday, December 9 at St John The Evangelist, Knotty Ash, Liverpool. The concert also starts 6.30pm and tickets are £10.

Bells says:

“There’s something about Christmas that, generally, makes people be the best version of themselves. I think Christmas music does the same. It’s music with ‘jingle bells and whistles on’ – and who can resist being a part of that?”

Rachel adds:

“Claire House is a lifeline to many families from Merseyside and beyond, and we simply wouldn’t be able to do the work that we do without the support of the local community.

“We hope these events not only celebrate the season but also bring people together to shine a light on the vital support our hospice provides to seriously and terminally ill babies, children and young adults and their families.”