Thoughts on Christmas, I guess
4 January 2011 04:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
3rdragonWe were at the house of my maternal grandparents for Christmas this year. It was a good Christmas, despite the fact that I slept in the living room and as a result did not get nearly enough sleep, and required caffeine so badly Christmas morning that I actually drank some coffee (I don't even like coffee. But I seem to have inherited enough of my mother's coffee-snobbery that it was clear to me that the coffee at my grandma's house is not very good). My grandpa's health is still declining, but even though we know it, and get depressing status report emails every now and then, it's still something I'm only marginally aware of when I look at him. He's a bit slower. These days when we get the sleeping bags down from the attic, it's Isaac who climbs up the ladder built into the wall of the hall closet, not grandpa. But last year I was aware, for the first time -- or, I really knew it for the first time -- that that experience would not be that way forever. This year, I felt very strongly, somewhere deep inside me, This will be the last Christmas like this.
And it's odd, really, because it's not as if Christmas is always the same; it's only within the last few years that we've had two cousins, not one, and only the past year or so that grandpa's sister has lived close enough that she and her husband and their son come for family gatherings. And I'm no longer a kid in the family, who gets piles of presents from everyone. But there's still that like this that I can't even really define, and I know it won't be there much longer.
We went to a Christmas Eve service at my grandparents' church. Grandpa didn't go, another change; I can't remember a time when he's passed by an opportunity to go to church, particularly not when the rest of us were going.
I was not expecting terribly much out of this service. I'm not very fond of this church -- I've been avoiding being at grandparents' houses on Sundays (both sets of grandparents) because I don't get on with their churches, and have been so successful that I don't think I've been to this particular church in years. But it was Christmas Eve. Of course I was going to go to church on Christmas Eve. And it's a Christmas Eve service. How bad could it get?
I should have expected that we would be singing off the wall. I do know that they sing off the wall at that church, but I guess I have a fixed idea in my head of what a Christmas Eve service is, and I couldn't imagine something different. And that image did not include singing off the wall.
(For those of you not current in churchy lingo, singing off the wall is when there's a screen at the front of the church, and the words are projected onto it. There's usually another on the back wall so the people standing in front know what's going on.
And I hate it. I have never been to a church that sang off the wall where people sing well -- I think churches that care about singing just don't sing off the wall. I suppose that singing off the wall doesn't necessarily preclude good singing, but it does pretty effectively squash out harmony unless you have a very strong core of singers who know the songs for each voice part. The singing wasn't all that bad the other night; the church was pretty full, and people usually know Christmas carols decently well. But I still don't like it. I found all the hymns in the book and sang them there, my one small act of defiance. Of course, the one 'Light a Thousand Candles' song that I didn't know (and therefore needed the music for) wasn't in the book, and most of the other people didn't seem to know it very well, either.)
They did have actual candles, although I find myself wondering if it's really holding candles if the holder is so efficient that you're holding plastic, not candle, and that you don't need to be even the tiniest bit worried about the wax leaking through the gaps in the paper skirt and landing on your hand. But it was real fire.
This did not stop me from being completely infuriated by the sermon, or homily, or message, or whatever they called it. Me, I'm a traditionalist and would rather just have a service of lessons and carols, with readings and music and no one lecturing you about the Meaning of Christmas. But no, we had the Meaning of Christmas. Worse, we had Meaning of Christmas by interpreting the 'no room in the inn' as a metaphor for our busy lives, with everyone too occupied with their own concerns to have time for Jesus (not, mind you, for the poor, or our neighbors, or anything like that, just Jesus), just like the people in the inn, who couldn't share their rooms blah blah blah.
You know, nowhere does it say that Mary and Joseph were wealthy. Furthermore, they were taking a holiday that they hadn't really planned for and probably would not have chosen, given their druthers. I do not think they were looking at the nicest inns. I bet that the sort of inns they were looking at were the kind of places where "no room in the inn" meant that there was no longer available floorspace to sleep on, not that the innkeeper didn't have a room free.
And I really have difficulty appreciating your homily when I can't agree with your basic interpretation. So that was bad enough.
Then we get to the second half, where he starts talking about how many people are unhappy around the holidays, how incidents of depression and suicide go up around this time . . . and concludes this segment by saying, "These people are unhappy because they're looking for joy in the wrong places." (The implication being, of course, that the right place is a Christ-centered life.)
EXCUSE ME??
There are lots of good reasons to be unhappy, even at Christmastime. And I like Christmas. A lot. (See my earlier post about Advent.) If you're depressed, accepting Jesus into your life will not magically (I suppose I should say miraculously) make you un-depressed. Even if you firmly believe that a loved one is in heaven, that doesn't mean that you can't be miserable because he or she isn't here. People don't even have to be dead for you to miss them -- especially around the holidays.
Needless to say, I did not find that any of the rest of the sermon spoke to me, either.
And then we didn't even sing "Silent Night" when everyone was standing with their candles lit.
Christmas itself was very nice, despite the the logistics of fitting nine people (one of them a four-year-old) into a three-bedroom house . . . We did the usual family meal, with the addition of grandpa's sister and her husband and their son, which managed not to be too weird, and then we did presents (I seem to be firmly on the grownup side of how many presents I get -- but you know, I'm okay with that), and we sang hymns (including "Silent Night"), and mom and I taught the family "Child of the Poor" (I can't find a youtube video that does the arrangement we do at church (or rather, I can't find a good recording that does the arrangement we do at church), but this is a nice simple arrangement, and this is more complicated, with an a cappella part replacing the piano, but they sing the third verses simultaneously (at about four minutes in the clip), which is what we do at church that I'm having trouble finding), which I learned this year, and layers really nicely with "What Child is This," and may be my new favorite Christmas carol. It's definitely my favorite new carol.
We drove back early Sunday morning and were very pleased to arrive in Philadelphia before the snow hit. Mom and I went to our regular church, where the service was, hm, intimate. Twenty-two or twenty-three people. But we sang, and Pastor Amy read us a story (Anne Lamott's "The Last Waltz," which seemed to catch the loose ends of how Christmas had been odd this year, and smooth over them), and the family that moved to Colorado were back to visit. It was generally just very low-tech and simple and right, the candles and the bare trees, and beating back the edge of winter with fellowship and song.
Happy new year, everyone.
And it's odd, really, because it's not as if Christmas is always the same; it's only within the last few years that we've had two cousins, not one, and only the past year or so that grandpa's sister has lived close enough that she and her husband and their son come for family gatherings. And I'm no longer a kid in the family, who gets piles of presents from everyone. But there's still that like this that I can't even really define, and I know it won't be there much longer.
We went to a Christmas Eve service at my grandparents' church. Grandpa didn't go, another change; I can't remember a time when he's passed by an opportunity to go to church, particularly not when the rest of us were going.
I was not expecting terribly much out of this service. I'm not very fond of this church -- I've been avoiding being at grandparents' houses on Sundays (both sets of grandparents) because I don't get on with their churches, and have been so successful that I don't think I've been to this particular church in years. But it was Christmas Eve. Of course I was going to go to church on Christmas Eve. And it's a Christmas Eve service. How bad could it get?
I should have expected that we would be singing off the wall. I do know that they sing off the wall at that church, but I guess I have a fixed idea in my head of what a Christmas Eve service is, and I couldn't imagine something different. And that image did not include singing off the wall.
(For those of you not current in churchy lingo, singing off the wall is when there's a screen at the front of the church, and the words are projected onto it. There's usually another on the back wall so the people standing in front know what's going on.
And I hate it. I have never been to a church that sang off the wall where people sing well -- I think churches that care about singing just don't sing off the wall. I suppose that singing off the wall doesn't necessarily preclude good singing, but it does pretty effectively squash out harmony unless you have a very strong core of singers who know the songs for each voice part. The singing wasn't all that bad the other night; the church was pretty full, and people usually know Christmas carols decently well. But I still don't like it. I found all the hymns in the book and sang them there, my one small act of defiance. Of course, the one 'Light a Thousand Candles' song that I didn't know (and therefore needed the music for) wasn't in the book, and most of the other people didn't seem to know it very well, either.)
They did have actual candles, although I find myself wondering if it's really holding candles if the holder is so efficient that you're holding plastic, not candle, and that you don't need to be even the tiniest bit worried about the wax leaking through the gaps in the paper skirt and landing on your hand. But it was real fire.
This did not stop me from being completely infuriated by the sermon, or homily, or message, or whatever they called it. Me, I'm a traditionalist and would rather just have a service of lessons and carols, with readings and music and no one lecturing you about the Meaning of Christmas. But no, we had the Meaning of Christmas. Worse, we had Meaning of Christmas by interpreting the 'no room in the inn' as a metaphor for our busy lives, with everyone too occupied with their own concerns to have time for Jesus (not, mind you, for the poor, or our neighbors, or anything like that, just Jesus), just like the people in the inn, who couldn't share their rooms blah blah blah.
You know, nowhere does it say that Mary and Joseph were wealthy. Furthermore, they were taking a holiday that they hadn't really planned for and probably would not have chosen, given their druthers. I do not think they were looking at the nicest inns. I bet that the sort of inns they were looking at were the kind of places where "no room in the inn" meant that there was no longer available floorspace to sleep on, not that the innkeeper didn't have a room free.
And I really have difficulty appreciating your homily when I can't agree with your basic interpretation. So that was bad enough.
Then we get to the second half, where he starts talking about how many people are unhappy around the holidays, how incidents of depression and suicide go up around this time . . . and concludes this segment by saying, "These people are unhappy because they're looking for joy in the wrong places." (The implication being, of course, that the right place is a Christ-centered life.)
EXCUSE ME??
There are lots of good reasons to be unhappy, even at Christmastime. And I like Christmas. A lot. (See my earlier post about Advent.) If you're depressed, accepting Jesus into your life will not magically (I suppose I should say miraculously) make you un-depressed. Even if you firmly believe that a loved one is in heaven, that doesn't mean that you can't be miserable because he or she isn't here. People don't even have to be dead for you to miss them -- especially around the holidays.
Needless to say, I did not find that any of the rest of the sermon spoke to me, either.
And then we didn't even sing "Silent Night" when everyone was standing with their candles lit.
Christmas itself was very nice, despite the the logistics of fitting nine people (one of them a four-year-old) into a three-bedroom house . . . We did the usual family meal, with the addition of grandpa's sister and her husband and their son, which managed not to be too weird, and then we did presents (I seem to be firmly on the grownup side of how many presents I get -- but you know, I'm okay with that), and we sang hymns (including "Silent Night"), and mom and I taught the family "Child of the Poor" (I can't find a youtube video that does the arrangement we do at church (or rather, I can't find a good recording that does the arrangement we do at church), but this is a nice simple arrangement, and this is more complicated, with an a cappella part replacing the piano, but they sing the third verses simultaneously (at about four minutes in the clip), which is what we do at church that I'm having trouble finding), which I learned this year, and layers really nicely with "What Child is This," and may be my new favorite Christmas carol. It's definitely my favorite new carol.
We drove back early Sunday morning and were very pleased to arrive in Philadelphia before the snow hit. Mom and I went to our regular church, where the service was, hm, intimate. Twenty-two or twenty-three people. But we sang, and Pastor Amy read us a story (Anne Lamott's "The Last Waltz," which seemed to catch the loose ends of how Christmas had been odd this year, and smooth over them), and the family that moved to Colorado were back to visit. It was generally just very low-tech and simple and right, the candles and the bare trees, and beating back the edge of winter with fellowship and song.
Happy new year, everyone.
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no subject
Date: 4 Jan 2011 09:17 pm (UTC)I mean, I have this song memorized and it does not go like this!
. . . Not that I opened the black hymnal to look.
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Date: 4 Jan 2011 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 4 Jan 2011 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 5 Jan 2011 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 5 Jan 2011 06:19 pm (UTC)