a lot like Christmas

As I write this morning, it is 24 hours until my first Christmas airport run. By the end of the day Thursday (12/23) Karen and I will be enjoying a house filled with our grown kids, a baby-sat cat, and boisterous conversation and laughter. A lot like Christmas, to us!

Christmas Eve we will wake up and some of us, at least, will structure the morning to be sure to catch the live broadcast of "A Service of Nine Lessons and Carols" from King's College, Cambridge. This is the most widely broadcast radio event of the year, world-wide, and the largest radio audience. Sort of like the World Cup of Christmas Eve music and worship, except it is the same "team" each year and there is no one else on the field. So, I guess really it isn't much like the World Cup ... except for the vast numbers that tune into it.

Our kids have grown up with Christmas Eve being built around Dad's work. They have participated in many a service themselves (lots of stories there!) and they have also patiently waited for some aspects of our celebration dinner on that night. This is our 15th Christmas at College Church, and our Christmas Eve dinner has a rhythm to it that connects us all to our years in Minnesota. It is when our family Christmas begins in earnest.

We used to attend a very special Christmas play, in St. Paul, MN. "The Black Nativity" combines the words of the Christmas story from the King James, some poetry by Langston Hughes, and a dozen or more traditional, spiritual, and gospel Christmas songs. It is a glorious mix, and when I say "our dinner has a rhythm to it," I am not only speaking metaphorically!

Christmas 1995: we did not know this was going to be our last Christmas in Minnesota. We were just making a complicated evening work between services and keeping up a family tradition. For the first time (and as far as I know, the only time), "The Black Nativity" was broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio. We had just enough time after our early service to get home, turn on the radio, and pop in a cassette tape. We had to tape the program, because Dad needed to head back to church before the 90-minute broadcast would conclude. It was a clear, brisk, starry night with perfect radio reception, and we snagged a very sharp recording. Which we labeled and put away.

Christmas 1996: our first in Wheaton, and after the early service we all got home and started to lay out the traditional Christmas Eve smorgasborg. Karen found our "Black Nativity" tape - unplayed for the full year - and as we set the table and finished up in the kitchen, we were transported back not only to the previous C. Eve, but to all the times we had attended the play. This became "a lot like Christmas" for us. It became official then (I probably made a rule. I love to make rules) - "Black Nativity" shall only be played once a year, on Christmas Eve.

So that is the scene, every December 24. Mom and Dad return from the family service, and the kids have got out this year's new candle holder for the center of the table. (Always a "surprise" from Dad to Mom.) "Black Nativity" is all cued up, and to the opening a cappella strains of the black preacher, "Come, ye disconsolate," we hit our stride (literally) of preparation. By the time the alto sings "Sweet Little Jesus Boy" we are sitting down at the table, pause the tape [which we have since transferred to CD to preserve its quality!] to light our Christ candle, and then we eat and sing and laugh and dance to the Christmas story as re-told in word and song by recently freed slaves in a barn cum church cum Bethlehem with Mary, Joseph, townsfolk, shepherds and all.

I'm told that there is the chance that at least one of our grown children might actually listen to her recording of "Black Nativity" before Christmas Eve. But you know, I choose to doubt it.

Check the links above to learn how to tune in to hear "Lessons and Carols" from King's College (WFMT or live streaming audio). Then sit down with a cup of coffee, tea, or cocoa, and a scone, and enjoy 90 glorious minutes of worship! It's Friday at 9am central standard time. And at the appropriate times with the congregation sitting in that cold chapel,

Sing on!