Easter Vigil - when did you start and finish?

[High Peak]

I would be most interested to know at what time your Easter Vigil started and concluded. I am aware that this has been mentioned in at least one other thread, but that thread really focussed on another aspect of the Vigil.

In my area, sun set this year was at 7.39pm but one parish had their Vigil starting at 7pm and I believe that another started even earlier!! Having experienced many Easter Vigils that started at 9.30 or 10pm and lasted 3 hours or more, I am frustrated (to put it mildly) at these early starts.

[alan29]

8.30 start so that the new fire illuminated the faces of the the ministers - all very Rembrandtesque - and we entered a dark church.
Finished about 10.15 with wine and nibbles to celebrate a new Catholic. I didn't stay as I was "on duty" again at the keyboard at 11.00 am.
My personal preference is still for the Easter Gloria to coincide with midnight, but hey ho! I guess that as our our congregations get older it will become increasingly difficult to have the Vigil so late.

[Southern Comfort]

9:00pm start, ended around 11:10. No baptisms or receptions. Also no sprinkling of the people: the congregation were invited to come to the font in procession and sign themselves with the newly-blessed water, which added time.

[Ros Wood]

Started announcements to explain procession and get people out side at 8pm. Fire lit about 8:15. This was a compromise on my suggestion that the earliest we should start was 8:30. No baptisms this year - finished around 10:30 then back for 9am and 11am Easter Morning.

[aggi_mc]

We are a 9pm start and finished at 11.30pm (as we left the Sanctuary). That was 9 people being received, Baptised and Confirmed (or some combination of these). Our fire has only recently been re-instated. Our length has always been around 2 / 2.5 hours and we always base the start time around the clocks at the time of year to ensure complete darkness.

[pdsfd]

Started at 6.30, finished at about 7.55, still light at the end! The Exsultet was sung in full but we didn't have a fire and just had the 3 readings before the Gloria (Genesis, Exodus and Isaiah) and the psalms were (sadly) spoken which made up some time. Wandering off topic slightly but I have to say it felt a bit odd and of an anti-climax hearing the last sentence of the Exodus reading and then saying rather than singing the canticle.

[VML]

Ours started at 8.30, just about darkish, except for the hideous floodlights from the flats next door. Full set of readings, sung psalms, one baptism, three receptions etc, Becker litany which actually seems shorter than the chant. Finished just before 11.00.
The earliest we have started was in 1987 when we were in daylight, 7.30, but that was apparently with episcopal permission as a mother and two children were being received.

[alan29]

Litany?

[blackthorn fairy]

We started at 8.00m and fininshed at about 10.15 (end of voluntary). Yes to the LItany, Alan29, and we sing it. We do three readings and psalms (sung), the full Exultet (sung by the Deacon to a simple chant - Tone 2), 5 0r 6 receptions this year and everything sung that can be sung. I wasn't as tired as I have been in previous years - not quite sure why.

[alan29]

I think our parish has never done the litany, no matter what else was going on. But we do (and always have) sing the psalms, and the priest had a stab at the Exultet - proper tone, short version.
But all this is off topic .........

[VML]

We have a litany of the saints when there is a baptism.
Exsultet is sung in full by one of two cantors, alternating year by year. We have never managed to get a priest or deacon to do it.

[John Ainslie]

Started at 8 - dark enough in London. Finished at 10.15. One confirmation, no baptisms/receptions, Litany and other sung requirements duly sung: the priest did a good job of the Exultet (long version). Minimum three OT readings.

[JW]

Started at 8pm, finished about 9.40. Long Exsultet sung by deacon (missal tone).

3 readings - had guest singers so we were able to sing the psalms (Margaret Rizza's 'Send forth your Spirit, Psallite 'Sing to the Lord (changing 'covered in glory' to 'glorious his triumph'), and Taime 'Like as the Deer".) The priest intoned the Alleluia using a proclamation none of us had heard before - so it was him alone as per the rubrics (usually everyone joins in with him) We used the old Easter Vigil Lauds Alleluia and psalm tone (in English: 'Give thanks to the Lord, Alleluia, for his love has no end, Alleluia, etc.). No baptisms or receptions so no Litany. We did renew our baptismal promises and were sprinkled to the hymn "Come to the water, all you who thirst". Long version of EP1 used. Mass setting was Glendalough. Franck's Panis Angelicus duet during the Communion Procession, again using our guest singers. Hymns: Now the Green Blade Riseth for Offertory, (Pachalbel Canon during incensing), Easter Vigil version of Christ be our Light for Communion Thanksgiving (must announce that next year as some people were trying to sing the normal version, despite the correct hymn number being shown!) and Thine be the Glory to finish, with Jeremiah Clark's Prince of Denmark March as the final voluntary.

One thing about the Exsultet: the deacon prefers not to be accompanied as he tends to sing his own version (and it is plainsong). This resulted in him dropping about a tone and a half by the time of the preface dialogue, and this is too low for him. I give him a note for the preface dialogue which brings him back, he then drops about 2 and a half tones by the end. Not ideal but it works for us.

[VML]

Interesting that you even consider accompaniment for the chant Exsultet. The one time I recorded my own singing of it I did slip just over a semitone by the end, and our other cantor is pretty well on pitch right through.
However since apart from the two of us there have only been 4 other singers in the last 28 years, and each of us has sung it 11 times, we would like to find someone else willing and able.

[justMary]

Started at 8pm, people were walking out at the end by 9:15pm. At the start it was fully light, by the end it was fully dark. Start time chosen to by the same as the other evening events (Holy Thursday and stations on Friday night - we learned the hard way that having different start times on different evenings is A Big Mistake.

Had a fire outside and procession in, the Exsultet was chnated in full, 3 OT readings before the (Genesis, Exodus and Isaiah) psalm responses on were sung (not the verses), Gloria was sung, Litnay was sung and there were three adults baptims and confirmations.

As you can see, they keep things moving along here in Ireland Even so I suspect the PP, who delegated the planning to the curate, believes 1.25 hours was too long.