1. On Saturday, I turn 72 years old.
Today, on Christmas Eve, I spent time contemplating what Christmas means to me and what I experience at this time in my life during the Christmas season. It feels to me like both well-meaning people and commercial entities urge me to feel the excitement and wonder I felt as a child at Christmas. I hear people talk about feeling the Christmas spirit, and I've lost track of just what that is.
I'm going to write more on down the page of this blog post about The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols I listened to this evening, a broadcast from King's College Chapel at Cambridge University in England.
For now, I want to draw upon one feature of that service.
Rachel Portman served as the Commissioned Composer for this service. She chose what the choir sang and she also composed a song for the service.
She set Thomas Hardy's poem, "The Darkling Thrush" to music. If you'd like to read the poem, go here: The Darkling Thrush | The Poetry Foundation
The speaker of the poem looks out over a desolate frigid winter landscape as the afternoon wanes, seeing signs of brokenness and dying before him.
Suddenly, an aged, frail, gaunt, tiny thrush breaks the bleak silence with a joyful evening song.
The thrush, according to the speaker, has "little cause for carolings" and yet fills this gray, chilly landscape with ecstatic song, a song the speaker experiences as "some blessed Hope".
As I age, Christmas becomes more and more solemn to me.
I'm not a Grinch. I wish people a Merry Christmas. I participate in gift exchanging.
But, it's not really a holly jolly time for me.
The birth of Jesus brings a light into a world of darkness, but Jesus doesn't extinguish the darkness.
The light of the birth of Jesus only has meaning to me as I examine and explore the darkness in which his light shines.
Much like the narrator of "The Darkling Thrush", I spend time contemplating bleakness, the deep and dreamless sleep, the dark streets, not just the hope, but the fears of all the years.
Then when I see the light, much like when the narrator hears the thrush sing, it has substance. I see what that light is always up against, what the light guides us to resist.
In his gospel, John instructs us that the darkness does not comprehend the light.
What a vital insight!
The opposite is not true. By the light, we not only can, but must comprehend the darkness so that we are light in the world, doing all we can not to add to the darkness.
That's why, as I grow older, Christmas can only be a time of light if I also experience it as a season of dark.
2. Because I so enjoy listening to Colleen Wheelahan host radio programming on Symphony Hall (SiriusXM Ch 78) and on WUOL through my Louisville Public Media app, as an added benefit, I learn about all kinds of programming on these stations.
I miss living where an Episcopal Church is only 5-20 minutes away, so today I wondered if I could have some kind of a Christmas Eve Episcopalian experience here in our living room.
Well, as it turns out, both of the classical music stations I listen to were each broadcasting a Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols service from the King's College Chapel at Cambridge University in England. (Okay. Technically this isn't Episcopalian, it's the Church of England, but they are very similar and are part of the same worldwide Anglican Communion.)
I tuned into the Symphony Hall offering at 5 PST and what they broadcast was all carols. The music and the singing were gorgeous, but, spiritually, I was hungry to hear the biblical lessons read.
Ah! At 7 p.m. my hopes were met!
Through Minnesota Public Radio, radio station KUOL broadcast the 2025 Lessons and Carols service from Cambridge in its entirety with music, singing, and readings.
This was just what I wanted and needed.
Hearing passages, beginning with Genesis and ending with John's "In the beginning was the word" nourished me and so did the choral music interspersed between the readings and those occasions in the service when the entire congregation sang.
Over at yourclassical.org, a sound file of this service will be up through the holiday season (for those with a free account) and I will almost certainly listen to it again and from that website I downloaded a PDF file of the service which has all the words of the prayers, readings, and hymns and so I can have this visual record forever.
3. The Symphony Hall channel made one more very meaningful musical experience available at 9 p.m. which added to the wisdom of my decision to stay home alone on Christmas Eve and experience this evening on my own terms.
I first heard the Messiah when I was a boy scout and our troop helped people park their cars in and around the newly built United Church building because a great crowd of people came to the church to hear the combined church choirs of the Silver Valley and a small orchestra present the Messiah.
I don't know if they sang the whole oratorio or, because it was around Easter time, if they sang selections. What I do remember is that I heard a harpsicord for the first time, loved it, and have ever since.
At NIC, at the end of fall quarter my sophomore year, our choir sang selections from the Messiah, a thrilling experience.
As the many years passed after that, I joined in a few Messiah sing alongs in both Spokane and Eugene and loved it whenever we put on a cd of the Messiah at home.
So, this evening, after listening to the two different presentations of Lessons and Carols, I listened to the entirety of the Messiah and experienced its story beginning with the prophecies of Isiah through to the Resurrection and Ascension.
As I creep toward turning 72 years old, I got to enjoy Christmas Eve in contemplation, as an Episcopalian, as one who loves classical music, and in uninterrupted solitude -- aside from a demand on occasion from Gibbs to tend to his needs. 🐕🐶
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