Christmas Eve in Los Angeles and Orange counties will be marked Wednesday by Masses and church services celebrating Jesus’ birth and the 66th annual Los Angeles County Holiday Celebration, billed by organizers as Los Angeles’ largest free holiday celebration.
Archbishop José H. Gomez will celebrate an English-language Christmas Eve Mass at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in downtown Los Angeles at 10 p.m. which will be preceded by Christmas carols with the cathedral’s choir at 9:30 p.m.
An English-language family Mass will be celebrated at 4 p.m. preceded by Christmas carols with the cathedral’s youth and children’s choir at 3:30 p.m.
A Spanish-language Mass will be celebrated at 7 p.m., which will be preceded by Christmas carols sung in Spanish at 6:30 p.m.
The 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Masses and 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Christmas carols performances will be streamed on the cathedral’s YouTube page, youtube.com/olacathedral, and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles’ Facebook page, www.facebook.com/lacatholics and broadcast on digital Channel 7.2 and SiriusXM satellite radio.
An English-language Midnight Mass will be celebrated at midnight at Christ Cathedral in Garden Grove, preceded by Christmas carols at 11:30 p.m. Christmas Eve Masses will be celebrated in Vietnamese at 3:30 p.m., 6 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., in English at 4 p.m. and Spanish at 7:45 p.m.
The Masses at 7:45 p.m., 9:30 p.m. and midnight will be livestreamed on The Diocese of Orange’s YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/@DioceseOrange, and the cathedral’s Facebook page, www.facebook.com/ChristCathedralCA.
“This Christmas let us once again open our hearts to remember that we are wonderfully created and still more wonderfully restored,” Gomez said in a statement.
“We have a great worth and dignity in God’s eyes. Each one of us. Let us allow Christmas to give our lives a new sense of our purpose. Everything we do now, let us do for love, and out of thanksgiving for this beautiful gift of his love.”
All advanced ticketed reservations for Wednesday’s Los Angeles County celebration at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion have been claimed.
People without advance tickets are welcome to join the standby line, which will open at 9:30 a.m. on Jerry Moss Plaza at The Music Center. Seating is not guaranteed. However, seats often become available as guests leave the theatre.
The celebration will run from 3-6 p.m. with performances by 21 music, dance and vocal ensembles and the Bob Baker Marionette Theater and hosted Grammy-nominated singer Aloe Blacc and his wife, Maya Jupiter, a rapper, singer-songwriter, actress, MC and radio personality.
The celebration will be televised live by KOCE-TV Channel 50 and streamed on its website, pbssocal.org and the celebration’s website, holidaycelebration.org, where information about the celebration is also available on its website.