NEWCASTLE — In what has become an annual tradition,

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Newcastle will present a service of Advent lessons and carols from 9:30- 10:30 a.m. Sunday, Dec. 24.

The service is intended to be a time of spiritual preparation. At this service, readings will be interspersed with carols and hymns, including such favorites such as “People, look East,” “O come, O come, Emmanuel,” and “Lo, how a Rose e’er blooming.” As a highlight of the service, soprano Sherri Dietrich will sing “He shall feed his flock” from Handel’s Messiah.

In 1934, 16 years after he had introduced “A Festival of Nine Lessons & Carols for Christmas Eve” to King’s College in Cambridge, the dean, Eric Milner-White, composed a further service, “A Procession with Carols upon Advent Sunday.”

His concern for more imaginative forms of worship appears in the preface he wrote to that service.

“In the old English liturgies, the Advent Offices made a preparation for the coming of our Lord to this earth far more vivid and eager than those of our present prayer book,” he wrote. “So an Advent carol service, if without precedent, is not without suitability, if it helps to express ‘the desire of all nations and ages.’”

The purpose of this service, he wrote, was “not to celebrate Christmas, but to expect it.”

St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church is located on 11 Glidden St.