Music performed for the Christmas season begins with two spectaculars today and continues through the month.

At Parkway Baptist Church, the sanctuary choir will present two performances of &8220;A Christmas Prayer,&8221; the first at 3:30 p.m. and the second at 6:15 p.m.

At St. Mary Basilica, the Alcorn State University Concert Choir will present the annual Festival of Music Christmas program. Under the direction of David Blackburn with Tony Gordon accompanying, the concert will begin at 7 p.m.

On Dec. 9 and 10, First Baptist Church in Natchez will present &8220;The Wonder of Christmas,&8221; which will include music, drama, dance and worship.

&8220;It&8217;s going to be a celebration of all of the sights and sounds of Christmas,&8221; said Carole Foster, assistant to the director of music at the church.

&8220;It will end with a celebration of the birth of our Savior.&8221;

Children will take part in the program, as will the Carillon Ringers, the hand-bell choir. And dancers from Natchez Ballet Academy will perform to &8220;Mary, Did You Know.&8221;

Guest soloist Derrick Burt will join the men&8217;s ensemble in the song &8220;Amen&8221; and will sing in other settings.

&8220;Our teenagers will sing,&8221; Foster said. &8220;And our pastor, Bill Hurt, will be in the percussion section for &8216;The Virgin Mary Had a Baby Boy.&8217;&8221;

One of the children of the church will recite the biblical narrative from Luke of the birth of Jesus.

&8220;There will be fabulous pageantry at the end,&8221; Foster said. &8220;It&8217;s going to be beautiful. And it has a surprise ending.&8221;

At First Presbyterian, the annual cantata will be presented during the 10 a.m. worship service on Dec. 17, said Becky Meason Jones, music director.

The cantata, &8220;A Child This Day,&8221; is by Benjamin Harlan, who produced the piece after Hurricane Katrina destroyed his house on the Gulf Coast and he experienced the love of helping hands.

&8220;It&8217;s a very joyful piece,&8221; Jones said. &8220;The entire thing is the nativity story from Scripture.&8221;

In the foreword to the cantata, Harlan refers to the many angels who came to the coast in the aftermath of the hurricane.

&8220;So, in a carol or a child&8217;s eyes, in a hug or a kind word, in helping hands and peanut butter crackers shared sitting on a tarp in front of the detritus of things that seemed important, we experienced the same love that came in the form of a child,&8221; Harlan said.

Jones said the spirit of the cantata is summed up in these words of Harlan: &8220;Love came down at Christmas &8212; I&8217;m so glad He stayed.&8221;

Zion Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church will present &8220;O, Come All Ye Faithful/Worthy is the Lamb&8221; at 7 p.m. on Dec. 22.

Under the direction of Tony Fields, the program will be music and narration, Fields said.

&8220;There will be familiar Bible verses about the Christmas story and birth of Jesus as well as narration about the history and meaning of the songs,&8221; Fields said.

The choir will offer music in its gospel style, he said. &8220;But we&8217;ll also have some traditional Christmas songs, too, and some of them with a new twist.&8221;

The hour-and-a-half program &8220;is really going to put people into the real spirit of Christmas, get them into the real meaning,&8221; Fields said. &8220;The timing is perfect, coming so close to Christmas.&8221;