Christmas Eve

When I was a kid, Christmas was the big ask for toys.  The playset you saw advertised during Saturday morning cartoons all year.  The toy that NONE of the other kids had.  Below are two highlights of my childhood.



As I became an adult, Christmas was the gathering of family, the frantic shopping a couple days before Christmas Eve, the onslaught of holiday movies, wonderful and awful (everyone has their own list of each:  I've only recently learned the folly of saying out loud what I thought the awful Christmas movies were: inevitably they will be at the top of someone's wonderful list), and the welcome vacation from school, both as a student and a teacher.  Sacred TV rituals of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and "Charlie Brown Christmas Special" sometimes gave a meaning to Christmas (I still lose it when Linus says "Lights, please?").


For years Christmas Eve was actually a reflective alone time for me.  When I was a music student in Ohio, everyone would have deserted town by Christmas Eve except for a few of us who had church jobs nearby.  I always found myself having cup after cup of coffee in Brady's Cafe, half-heartedly reading or writing in my journal while contemplating the past year.  Even after moving to DC, I would spend much of Christmas Eve alone before singing Christmas Eve services as housemates returned home or my wife went to her family's house for their traditional seafood dinner.  I can recall looking at the lights on a couple dozen Christmas trees, thinking about the past year and past Christmas Eves in churches great and small.

This year, I was worried I wouldn't be able to sing on Christmas Eve.  The virus had shut down most music making apart from making youtube videos.  But happily Kevin, the music director where I sing, reached out to four of us to social distance sing a couple services.  A good assortment of music--Buxtehude, Haydn, Nestor, and the Willcocks arrangements of the big carols--made me even more eager to sing.

At the rehearsal last Sunday, Nick, the tenor, said Christmas starts during the second verse of "O Come All Ye Faithful" with the descant on Sing Choirs of Angels.  Alyssa, the alto, said Christmas is the chord at the text "Word of the Father" in the last verse of the carol.  I tossed in the chromatics at the end of "Hark the Herald Sing."  I put up a post on facebook saying the service would be streamed on facebook.  Chris, a friend from college, chimed in that he really missed singing Christmas Eve.


Well, we sang last night.  The string players were thrilled to perform live again and were effusive in their comments (Usually instrumentalists take their checks and go after a gig.).  We were exhausted but thrilled with singing.  A couple of us were in tears at the end of "Hark The Herald."  We all said our goodbyes and left.  I walked back home on deserted streets, the bars usually open Christmas Eve dark.

I made a milkshake with some Oreos mixed in when I got home.  I watched some TV with Robin and then went to bed early for me.  I was still thrilled I got a chance to sing on Christmas Eve this year.   Then it hit me.  Christmas is singing.  When else does a congregation sing in church?  When else does a classical music station play choral music?  What other music will people who are recalcitrant about singing recognize and sing along to?  Without singing, Christmas is just a day on the church calendar, the make or break season for retail, a time for required family get togethers.

I hope we can all sing again next year.



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