Category: Faith

We Need a Little Christmas

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Recently, I walked into our spare bedroom in search of something, and there stood the music stand and the little gadget we used to hold our cell phones to record singing videos during the pandemic. I hope we never, ever have to do that again.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I am ready for real holidays this year. It feels like it’s been too long since we’ve been able to enjoy December without conducting a home lab test every time we sneezed or coughed. 2020 was horrible. Sitting in front of the TV on Christmas Eve watching services being streamed to empty churches. Recording (with much angst and frustration) a few anthems at home so they could be uploaded to a video our Chorale produced since we couldn’t do a Christmas concert. Putting a still-warm Christmas dinner in plastic containers to take to a nearby relative, who was quarantined in her retirement community. Earnestly decorating the house even though no one was going to see it except my husband and me. And even last year, Covid was still very much here. We sang Christmas concerts masked and barely got them in before a resurgence of the virus that would have canceled our performances. We attended Christmas Eve church socially distanced and with masks but couldn’t sing in the choir because of a Covid outbreak. We were still cautious about going anywhere indoors with other people.

I know, what we experienced was minimal compared to those who lost loved ones and who fought the battle on the front lines of the medical and business community. But if nothing else, the pandemic holidays were a harsh reminder of how much we take for granted. How we assume that we’ll always be able to do whatever we choose and whatever we’ve always done before. Until we can’t.

So this year, I’m ready for all of it. Let’s haul out the holly and sing the Hallelujah Chorus and do whatever else brings the spirit of the season. For us, that means making plans and filling up our December calendar. We’re singing as often as we possibly can, even if it means still donning the occasional mask. We’re attending concerts and saying yes to invitations and welcoming friends and family into our home again.

But the Covid scars remain—the plastic screens at check-outs, the mask requirements at medical facilities, the number of people still contracting the virus which is, thankfully for most, more of an inconvenience than a crisis. All of the holiday hoop-la is still tinged with the memory of the last two years. Which makes me appreciate the season all the more—from its over-the-top commercialism to the humbling and profound faith journey through the darkness of Advent to the light of Christmas.

This year, more than ever, we need a little Christmas.

Some Days I Miss the Freezer Sale

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For many years, our church did a massive fund-raiser called the Freezer Sale. Looking back, I can’t believe what was accomplished in that project. We literally cooked every Saturday from early summer through November, producing hundreds of homemade soups, entrees, side dishes, and pies. A small group of us steered the project from menu-planning to procuring ingredients to  marketing the event and managing the financial record-keeping. This all culminated in a sale on the Saturday before Thanksgiving which became a community tradition.  

Like many undertakings of this nature, the Freezer Sale eventually ran its course, and for a number of reasons—burn-out, Covid, changes in the evolution of the church itself—it no longer exists. Toward the end, it was turning into way too much work for way too few people, and then the pandemic sealed its fate. The dozen or so commercial freezers in the basement stand empty and unplugged and are probably on the market to be sold if they haven’t been already.

But on these crisp fall Saturday mornings, I miss coming into the parish hall and smelling onions cooking or chickens roasting or seeing a group of parishioners gathered around a giant trash can peeling apples or potatoes. There was always chatter and laughter and at times, frustration, and griping. None of us were professional cooks or had background in food management, but we just plugged along with the various skills that we had and made it happen. There was a spirit there, a sense of camaraderie, a sense of working for the greater good that superseded all of the challenges we faced. The Freezer Sale provided nourishment for the soul as well as the body.

We told our stories while chopping onions and vented our worries and fears while rolling pie dough. We laughed about the antics of grandchildren and pets while slamming overloaded trays into the cantankerous dishwasher. And after most cooking sessions, we sat down together to rest and share a communion of sorts. Coffee and baked goods after the liturgy of shepherd’s pie.

The Freezer Sale was an example of believing in what you cannot see. We did not see the elderly widow alone in her apartment, savoring ham and bean soup on a cold night. Or the family tearing into chicken enchiladas giving the exhausted mom time to catch her breath. Or that the proceeds from the sale provided a winter coat for a child, a rental or fuel oil payment, or Christmas gifts in a room that would be otherwise empty.

So occasionally I’m nostalgic for getting up early on Saturday mornings and lugging my Kitchen Aid mixer into the church for a mashed-potato-making marathon. Or sitting at the check-out desk, cash box at the ready, waiting for the doors to open on sale day. I miss the people and the knowledge that when one of us grew tired, someone would be there to take the spoon from our hand and keep stirring. And I miss the special grace that comes from showing up, even when you don’t feel like it, and saying, “What can I do to help?”

View from the Pew

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I was really looking forward to Easter this year. After sitting in front of our TV two years ago, watching services streamed from post-apocalyptic empty sanctuaries to nervously stepping back into masked and temperature-checked in-person worship last Easter, I was ready for a pull-out-all -the-stops celebration.

But for the first time in as long as I can remember (last two years not withstanding), I did not sing in an Easter choir. Earlier this week, I noticed some cold symptoms—sore throat, a little congestion. I immediately took a home Covid test which was negative and so for the most part, went about my business including a choir rehearsal and two Holy Week services. But yesterday, whatever virus had taken up residence migrated south into my vocal cords. My voice was reduced to a whisper and singing anything above middle C was impossible. I was relegated to the pews.

But despite my disappointment at not being able to sing in a truly glorious Easter celebration, I will say there is something to be gleaned from sitting back and allowing worship to happen without anxiously paging through my folder for the next anthem or hymn. It was a chance to be still and really listen for the voice of God which came through loud and clear in the rector’s sermon. It was almost like God was saying to me, “Ok, just stop multi-tasking for an hour or two and pay attention.” And it was a chance to people-watch. Currently my husband and I are dividing our time between two different churches, which, odd as it sounds, is working well for us. This morning I was at the church where we are relative newcomers so I could observe in anonymity.

At the first service, an elderly woman sat in the pew adjacent to mine. She was stooped and frail and yet, when the procession came up the aisle, she not only sang Christ the Lord is Risen Today, with gusto, she kept time by swinging her right arm as if she was conducting the brass choir. She was the picture of joy. (Although later she was less than joyful when told she could no longer intinct her wafer in the communion wine. The Episcopal Church is still trying to sort itself out when it comes to receiving communion.)   

I watched people re-connect with family members and friends they don’t often see. I watched the brass choir sing the hymns and service music when they weren’t playing. They weren’t just there as paid musicians but were engaged in the worship experience. At the beginning of the second service, a woman in front of me turned around to watch for the beginning of the procession with as much anticipation as if she were looking for a bride to come up the aisle. I saw the expressions on people’s faces as they took communion—gratitude, humility, smiles, even a few tears. I watched teenagers proudly carry the processional cross, entwined with Easter lilies and later one of those same teens brought the tray for pew communions. Seeing them gave me hope that the church may yet last for another generation or two, despite the media’s dire predictions of the imminent demise of organized religion.

Yes, I missed the singing, but I realized this morning that sometimes I’m missing the point. The opportunity  to be an observer instead of a participant allowed some much-needed space for other things in my mind and my spirit, and I’m grateful for that.

Happy Easter.

My Grandparents’ Creche

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I always put up two creches at Christmas. The one in our family room came from a 1960’s Woolworth’s, where it was displayed in the same aisle as the plastic window candles and aluminum trees. Some of the figures still have price tags on the bottom that say twenty-nine cents. A few of the lambs are amputees and the original cardboard stable has long since disintegrated, but this is the creche I grew up with, and I still cherish its delightful tackiness.

My other creche is a work of art, one of the things I would save if the house was on fire. My grandmother “did ceramics” as it was referred to in those days, and hand-painted each figurine in exquisite detail. She dedicated countless hours of tedious work to create a gift for my grandfather who built the stable. The wooden box he designed is as solid and unblemished today as it was that very first Christmas. Inscribed on the bottom of each piece are their initials, like teenage lovers’ names carved into a tree, “ALD to JDD, 1959.”

On Christmas Eve, I would walk a block down the street to their home, carefully remove the baby Jesus from his bed of tissue paper in a Carolina Soap box, and gently place him in the manger, followed by my grandparents and me standing in front of the fireplace singing “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” As staunch Episcopalians, we believed in liturgical correctness, so the baby never arrived in the manger before Christmas Eve, and the Magi were always strategically placed, approaching from the east.

After my grandparents passed away, the creche moved to my father’s home. Even in his last years, he insisted that it be retrieved from the cupboard beside the stairs and set up in the same place as its predecessor from the five-and-ten. And when the creche finally came to me, I wept as I placed Mary and Joseph in that simple wooden stable on my grandmother’s desk, now in my own living room.

Every December, when I unwrap each piece, I marvel at the rich purple colors of the kings’ robes, the almost lifelike eyes of the human figures, the wonder on the face of the kneeling shepherd boy who has earned a place of honor inside the stable itself. I run my hands over the texture of the saddle on the camel, the pointed wings of the angel with her “Gloria in Excelsis” banner, the empty indentation of the manger bed, waiting for its holy occupant. I place that same soap box with the words “Baby Jesus” scrawled on the lid in my grandmother’s handwriting, into a cubby of her desk where it waits, like the rest of us, during the dark weeks of Advent.

I picture my grandmother, in her ceramics room filled with paint-spattered card tables, crumpled rags, and brushes soaking in peanut butter jars. I imagine her sitting there in her smock, deciding on the colors, using that miniscule brush to outline the eyes of the figures and the words on the angel’s banner, applying the extra coat of glaze to give a sheen to the animals’ coats. I think of my grandfather, puttering in his basement workshop after a long day of seeing patients, selecting just the right pieces of wood, cutting, and sanding and nailing them together to create a perfect miniature stable. I think of the joy and pride they must have experienced on Christmas Eve 1959, seeing their gift to God and each other, displayed for the first time between two miniature evergreen trees on the mantel above their fireplace.

The people who celebrated Christmas with me as a child are gone now. But in the ritual of the creche, I feel their presence. Their hands guide me as I unfold and smooth the green fabric that goes under the stable, position the light to shine directly down on the manger bed, and make sure the angel is properly anchored on her little hook. In that creche, I smell the pine branches and the wood smoke from the fireplace as I walk into my grandparents’ home on Christmas Eve, wearing my new velvet dress with the pink rose, ready for my first ever midnight mass. I taste the eggnog sprinkled with nutmeg in my grandmother’s antique crystal punch cup. I hear my grandfather’s slightly off-key singing and years later, my dad’s weakened voice on the phone, asking when I’m going to stop by and set up the manger for him.

I spend Christmas Eves now surrounded and loved by other people. People for whom my grandmother’s creche is simply a beautiful decoration. We arrive home from church each year energized by the glorious music and the excitement of Christmas coming once again. We chatter about the service and what time to have dinner the next day, as I pour cups of eggnog spiked with rum and set out plates of homemade cookies.

Before I go to bed, I walk into the darkened living room, lit only by window candles and the lights surrounding the manger. On top of the desk is a picture of my smiling grandparents, standing in front of a Christmas tree, arms tightly clasped around each other’s waists. I still miss them. I close my eyes and thank them for magical childhood Christmases and for teaching me that this creche, made with their own loving hands, is at the center of it all.

I reach into the cubby in the desk and pull out the Carolina Soap box. I remove the baby from its tissue paper womb, and my hands, now speckled with age spots like my grandmother’s, once again place the tiny baby in the manger as I quietly sing “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”