Christmas Day: Hang on, and enjoy the ride

On this day earth shall ring
With the song children sing
to the Lord, Christ our King,
born on earth to save us;
him the Father gave us.
Ideo-o-o, Ideo-o-o-
Ideo gloria in excelsis Deo!

Pencilled into my score is the admonition “LH bench.” This means to hang on to the bench with my left hand in order to get through this hymn with right hand and feet. We have it in our hymnal with its tune Personent hodie in the arrangement by Gustav Holst, and we sing it most every year on Christmas Day in the morning. The descending scale in D major which opens the piece is challenging, and the pedal part continues to bounce along through the hymn. Often as not, I miss quite a few of the notes.

It is enormous fun.

I was wrong in my previous entry when I claimed that December 25 is just another work day. How can it be, when it is our Lord's Nativity?

Sing, O sing, this blessed morn,
unto us a child is born,
unto us a son is giv'n,
God himself comes down from heav'n
Sing, O sing, this blessed morn,
Jesus Christ today is born.

Sure, there is work to be done. Once I finish my bread, cheese, and tea (I eat and drink it as I write these words) I must get back on the bench and prepare for tomorrow. I am playing settings of God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen and Antioch (Joy to the World) by Kenton Coe and Emma Lou Diemer, and both need one more solid workout; it should take me about an hour. They are worth it; there is, for example, a special moment in the K. Coe where, after a pages-long buildup, we get to the refrain:

O tidings of comfort and joy!

It is glorious, worthy of these words of grace. Not many people play this music (the K. Coe setting), which is unpublished; I am pleased and honored that I am one of them.

It is not just another work day, for after the Nativity, work can never be the same. It is no longer the curse laid upon Adam and his sons, for in Christ, Duty and Delight become one, as my teacher Erik Routley liked to say.

No more let sins or sorrows grow,
Or thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make his blessings flow
Far as the curse is found.

We had interesting services last night and today. At the early Christmas Eve service, two of our youth choir alumnae were back to sing with us. J. and her brother got here first, and when M. came in, J. leapt up, ran to the back of the room, and hugged her as if they had been apart for months, these two friends. As indeed they have. I almost burst into tears just to see it.

At one point in the hymns, I made a howler of a mistake, playing a chord from a different key than the one we were in. Y., one of our trebles, gave me a quizzical look: “Where did THAT come from?” All I could do was laugh, and be glad that someone was paying attention. She is an intelligent and talented girl, and whatever she does in life, it is likely to be good. I am glad for such people in the choir. Later on at the end of my postlude, her little brother came up and gave me their Christmas present; a chocolate-covered pretzel and a box of English Breakfast Tea.

Our big anthem, “Hope for Resolution” (which the RSCM readers of these pages will know), went well. I worked hard on the accompaniment after playing it badly last year, and did better this time, as did they. I wish we had the drums – I had a good lead this year on a drummer, but he and his family went to Minneapolis for the holidays. We have a good drummer in the choir, E., but we needed him to sing rather than drum. We had four fine young choirmen in the back row on tenor and bass, and they acquitted themselves well. I am proud of them, and find it hard to believe that they are so grown up.

The early Christmas service is the near-exact analogue to our normal Sunday “contemporary” service. It has become our largest Christmas Eve service by far, more than double the size of the Midnight Mass. This, in turn, is analogous to our Sunday Choral Eucharist, with choir and organ. A decade ago, the Midnight service packed the church; now, there are lots of empty seats, and the early service is the one with a capacity crowd. I am always sad about this, increasingly so as the Midnight service continues its decline. Would that all three services had capacity crowds. But (at midnight) the adult choir sang very well, and our instrumental group, “The (mostly) Brass Quintet,” going without their horn player who had slid off into a snowdrift on the way into town, added the dignity that only a (mostly) brass group can. Their fanfares for “O come, all ye faithful” and “Hark, the herald angels sing” were all that they should be, and their playing of the Schubert Sanctus (from the German Mass: S-130 in the Episcopal hymnal) and Stille Nacht were sublime. Missing the horn, they had to cancel their half hour of prelude music. I can attest that they were well prepared, for I heard most of their Thursday evening rehearsal.

This morning's Mass for Christmas Day is the analogue of our “eight-o'clock” spoken service. We had well over two hundred at the “contemporary” service last night, and about one hundred at the Midnight service; this morning's congregation numbered twenty-nine. But the priest was our distinguished Fr. H., who genuflects at the Words of Institution and says the Agnus Dei even though we aren't supposed to in this parish for anything except a Rite One service. I thought he was going to launch us into the Confession and Absolution, also notably absent from our services during the Twelve Days. There was certainly a long pause at that point, and I think he was considering the possibility. There are advantages to being old enough to not care what anyone thinks.

It was a happy and good service with the no-nonsense feel of a good Anglican eight-o'clock liturgy.

And now, back to work:

Oh, may thy house be mine abode,
And all my work be praise....

....
To those who read these pages, my grateful thanks and greetings. May all of you have a most blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year.