Cathedral Masses, LA County Holiday Celebration set for Christmas Eve

Archbishop José H. Gomez will preside at a 10 p.m. English-language Christmas Eve Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, which will be preceded by Christmas carols with cathedral’s choir at 9:30 p.m. on Sunday. Photo from the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels

LOS ANGELES – Christmas Eve in the Southland will be marked Sunday by Masses and services and the 64th annual Los Angeles County Holiday Celebration at The Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Archbishop José H. Gomez will preside at a 10 p.m. English-language Christmas Eve Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, which will be preceded by Christmas carols with cathedral’s choir at 9:30 p.m.

There will also be English-language Masses celebrated at 8 a.m. and 10 a.m., a Spanish-language Mass at 12:30 p.m. and a 4 p.m. English-language family Mass with the cathedral’s children’s choir.

The 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. Masses will be streamed at facebook.com/olacathedral and youtube.com/olacathedral.

Gomez will also celebrate the 12:30 p.m. Christmas Day Mass in Spanish with the Spanish-language choir leading in song. English-language Christmas Day Masses will be celebrated at 8 a.m. and 10 a.m.

The Christmas Day 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Masses will be broadcast live on the ABC7 Los Angeles app, Localish Network, over on digital Channel 7.2  and channels 703 or 1246 on Spectrum cable systems, Channel 467 on Frontier cable systems, Channel 1133 on Cox Cable systems and Channel 520 on Mediacom cable systems.

The promise of Christmas, in every Eucharist

“We are drawn back, year after year, to find Mary and Joseph and the Child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger,” Gomez said. “Jesus entered our world as a Child, and he told us that in order to enter his world, we also need to become children. The Child who comes on Christmas promised to never leave us. He renews that promise, the promise of Christmas, in every Eucharist.

“Jesus comes to be with us, to be the bread of life, to fill us with his own divine life. We can find this Child, we can meet him again and again, in our churches. He is there at the altar, he is there in the tabernacle, just as he was present in the manger, waiting for us, waiting to give himself to us. Let’s keep praying for one another in this holy season.”

The 64th annual Los Angeles County Holiday Celebration will be held at The Music Center’s Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

The holiday celebration will run from 3-6 p.m. It is billed as Los Angeles’ largest free multicultural holiday celebration. It will be televised live by KOCE TV Channel 50 and streamed at pbssocal.org and the Music Center’s website.

It will be rebroadcast at 6 p.m. Sunday on KOCE and at 9 p.m. Sunday and noon Monday on KCET-TV Channel 28.

Tickets are not required. Seating is on a first-come, first-seated basis. Seating is not guaranteed.

Doors open at 2:30 p.m. A line on the Hope Street side of Jerry Moss Plaza at The Music Center starts forming at roughly 9 a.m. Parking is free in The Music Center garage.

Multicultural celebration

There will be holiday-themed performances by 23 professional and community-based music and dance ensembles, children’s and adult choirs during the celebration which will be hosted by opera singer Suzanna Guzmán for the 10th year and actor/model/disabilities advocate Danny J. Gomez.

The Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles will perform at the celebration for the 33rd consecutive year, singing upbeat holiday songs. It is scheduled to perform between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m.

The Klezmer-Rock band Mostly Kosher will be joined by the Jewish Youth Orchestra, a community-based ensemble of high school and university-aged musicians, in a performance between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m.

Groups set to perform from 3-4 p.m. include:

• South Side Symphony, an 18-piece Black youth orchestra which
  fuses soul, hip-hop and jazz with classical technique
• RAISE singers, an 18-member soul-gospel-R&B choir
• Técnica Arte y Folklore, a Mexican folklorico group
• Pasadena Girls’ Choir, which consists of singers 7-17
• Christian Fellowship Chorale, a 30-member gospel choir accompanied by piano, guitar, bass & drums

Groups set to perform from 4-5 p.m. include:

• Torrance Civic Chorale & South Bay Children’s Choir
• Hiza Yoo Korean Dance Institute (Korean dance)
• VOX Femina Los Angeles, an all-female choir
• Gabrielito y La Verdad, nine-piece Latin jazz band whose repertoire includes salsa, cha, boogaloo, funk, Cumbia and Latin soul
• Ramón C. Cortines School of Visual and Performing Arts’ vocal
  ensemble
• Treble on Grand, which performs a cappella accompanied jazz songs and pop music
• XoroTroptz, Los Angeles-based Bulgarian folk dance ensemble
• MUSYCA Children’s Choir

Other groups set to perform from 5-6 p.m. include:

• Divas and Drummers of Compton, dance and drumline group that reached the quarterfinals of “America’s Got Talent” and performed in the Super Bowl LVI pregame show
• Palmdale High School Chamber Singers a cappella choir ensemble
• Antelope Valley-based choral group
• Sunday Night Singers
• City College’s the Citrus Singers, a 30-member choir with which
  performs with handbells
• Reverb Tap, tap dance ensemble
• Mariachi Divas de Cindy Shea, the two-time Grammy-winning all-female mariachi ensemble

More information on the celebration is available here. (CNS)