At Holiday, the Spirit Moves Them --Quickly : Churches: Volunteers scramble to set up for services as Advent and Christmas Eve rites nearly overlap.

The switcheroo was good-naturedly fast and furious at St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church on Sunday morning.

Away went the purple ornamental cloth and candles decorating the altar for the Advent service held early in the day. In came the red ribbons, poinsettias and white-and-gold decorated cloth, or frontal, used to celebrate Christmas services.

Church volunteers, themselves pressed for time because of pending holiday dinners and last-minute errands, polished crosses, prepped wreaths and placed bows on pews to help ensure that afternoon and night services would carry the full spirit of noel.

“Everything was changed in here. Nothing looks as it did,” the Rev. Ellen Hill, church rector, said with a smile. “Preparing for Christmas is really labor intensive.”

This Christmas Eve was especially pressure-filled for many worshipers because it was also the last Sunday of Advent, which includes the four Sundays before Christmas. The nearly overlapping services made for one of the biggest churchgoing days of the year, with the faithful confronted with a double duty of sorts--Sunday service followed by a Christmas service.

Churches throughout Southern California have been gearing up all week for the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day onslaught. For many clergy and volunteers, it has been virtually round-the-clock work, beginning with early-morning Sunday services, afternoon children’s services, the evening Christmas vigil and then for Catholics the granddaddy of them all--midnight Mass.

“For priests, lectors, ushers, altar servers, musicians and choir people, two sets of Masses in two days means a lot of double duty,” said Father Gregory Coiro, director of media relations for the Catholic Archdiocese in Los Angeles.

Msgr. Gerald Wilkerson and two other priests at Our Lady of Grace Catholic Church in Encino took turns starting at 5 p.m. Saturday, continuing with four Sunday morning Masses. Then they said Masses at 5 p.m. and midnight on Christmas Eve when both services filled the church on Ventura Boulevard to its 1,500-person capacity.

Then, today, on Christmas, four Masses will again be celebrated at 8, 9:30 and 11 a.m. and at 12:30 p.m. Meanwhile, parishioners were busy filling food baskets for the needy. Children have been collecting gifts to distribute at Juvenile Hall. There are choir rehearsals. The work at the church--with 2,300 registered families--is never done.

“Thank goodness next year is a leap year and Christmas will be on a Wednesday,” Wilkerson said.

For many churches, even the preparations for Christmas services have presented a puzzle.

Catholic, Episcopal and many Lutheran churches normally change the decorations in the worship areas after the fourth and final Sunday of the Christmas Advent season, switching to Christmas colors and symbols.

But with only several hours between the end of Advent and Christmas Eve, many of those so-called liturgical churches already introduced poinsettias, Christmas trees or creches into the church.

“It’s just one of those years when you can’t do anything else, even if we had 100 volunteers to help,” Wilkerson said.

At Saint Bede the Venerable Catholic Church in La Canada, the Christmas Mass preparations started some four days before the big event. That’s because the whole sanctuary of the church had to be transformed into a life-size manger scene.

Each year, a team of half a dozen college students does the make-over, working day and night to finish the job.

“It’s tough when Christmas falls on a weekend,” said Joe Billitti, a UC-Davis student who is coordinating the church construction. “If we could plan it, we’d have Christmas fall on a Friday. That way we could have four whole days after Sunday to prepare and we could walk away, job done. This way, we’re working Christmas Eve.”

While much of the manger scene was in place Sunday at Saint Bede, workers have only four hours after the day’s last Mass to bring in the life-size manger figures before the 4 p.m. children’s Mass.

Said bookkeeper Marguerite Rudolph: “It’s like shutting one business down and starting up another--all in the same day. It’s tough.”

Like many others, First Presbyterian Church of Granada Hills has had a mixture of Advent and Christmas colors and symbols in the church for weeks now.

The decorating has been done by several different groups, including a Boy Scout group based in the church. Members of the congregation built a float for the annual Granada Hills Christmas Parade.

Meanwhile, deacons assembled food packages. A dance was held for high school students at the church last Saturday. And an elementary school connected with the church performed the skit “Rip Van Christmas.”

Hill, of St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, said she tried her best to wait until after the Advent service to decorate the church for Christmas, out of respect for worshipers. There were only a few wreaths minus their red ribbons and other somewhat discreet decorations placed about the church before Sunday, which made the transition intense, she said.

“Good liturgy really is a production,” she said. “It doesn’t just happen.”

Priests at many churches have schedules that include a dozen Masses.

“For the priests, if the homilies are to be any good, it takes hours of preparation,” Coiro said. “But this is a positive thing. It’s Christmas. For everyone involved, this is a labor of love.”