The Santa Fe Desert Chorale. Photo: desertchorale.org
We all struggle with many things this time of year, and the pleasant reminders to “Have a good day” may make us feel isolated in a sea of good feeling.
I’m probably not the only one who remembers childhood Christmases with mixed feelings. My excitement leading up to the day was so powerful it hurt, and I dimly felt that I was excited in a way that couldn’t be easily resolved.
In those ancient times, the riotous expectations of the five of us children may have made our parents uncomfortable; certainly they tried to contain it, even to dilute it.
On Christmas morning, the only morning of the year, we had a sit-down breakfast in the dining room. The doors to the hall where the tree and its presents waited were closed, and we were not allowed to peek or hurry. I don’t remember having much of an appetite for the scrambled eggs, sausage, and hash browns that made up that sumptuous menu.
It was probably our father who stacked the wrapped presents in five separate piles for his five children, in an attempt to control a wild scramble. But it meant that I could, from the start, see the approach of the end; there were a lot of presents in each of the five piles but the end was there in sight. Perhaps that’s when I tried to bat away the chilly feeling that presents were not really what I wanted.
This has carried over into my love/hate relationship with shopping. Yes, it’s fun to examine and touch the plethora of objects laid out in the shops but inevitably there comes a moment when what I’ve bought and brought home seems to turn to dust.
But enough of this gloom! What remains with me is the beautiful inevitability of church services on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, the hymns and carols I loved and love, especially “How a Rose E’er Blooming” which I heard Friday night, sung by the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, lifting my spirits then as now.
So I have, as we all have, the rituals of many traditions, the colors, the music, the incense and candles, reassuring even to me of wavering faith, and it may be that one day I will see a woman at the altar whose delicate soprano delights me as much as the base voices of my childhood.
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