For an hour and a half of December 24th, in between overstuffed dinners, toffee coated pistachios and fireside gatherings spent arguing immigration policy/ornament placement, I attended a United Church of Christ Christmas Eve service.  Although I don’t believe in God, let alone practice Christianity, this service was the first Christmas Eve service that I’ve merely watched as an audience member rather than participated in since I was six years old.
 You know army brats?  Well, I’m a church brat.  My mother is a professoinal organist, and since “talkies” came along, rendering movie theater organs extinct, the only place an accomplished organist can get a job is in a church.  Not to mention the fact that my mother’s also a minister’s daughter and probably feels more at home in front of  a cross than she does the TV.  Being a church brat was actually pretty fun.  I grew up sneaking into drafty kitchens to steal cookies and Dixie cups of Kool-Aid while mom practiced the Bach Cantata for Maundy Thursday, dressing up as Mary Magdalene in cotton/poly blend cassocks, vying to play Angel Gabriel in the Christmas pageant (he gets to talk the most) and giddily avoiding the tiresome ancient ladies who seem to live in the dark wood annexes.  When I felt shy I would spend Sunday services sitting in the chair in my mother’s organ booth, propped up by books of Handel’s Water Music, watching her feet and fingers fly over the pedals, keyboards and valves.  Singing in the church choir was required until I graduated from high school.  And until this year, when my mother retired from her position at the Community Church of Mountain Lakes, I’ve sung at every Christmas Eve service for 21 years. 

 I know I’m basically waving a Laura Ashley jumper in the sky, screaming, “Okay, I surrender to the kingdom of Dweeb.”  But participating in these services was always quite magical.  It has certainly left me with some terrible dork habits, like singing the descant on “Hark the Herald Angels Sing, *always* harmonizing on “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” or belting the counter melodic, “Night of Silence” while everyone else sings “Silent Night” and in general taking caroling parties too seriously.  Also, in my adulthood, singing at Christmas Eve felt a bit fraudulent, as I enjoyed not the meaning but the emotion and the melodic turns of the phrase “What I Can I Give Him, Give My Heart” in a community of people who sang it for real.
Nonetheless, every Christmas eve when the church, singing “Once in Royal David’s City” in unison and passing a flame from thin white candle to thin white candle, urged by the pastor to “take their light into the world,” I’ve choked up with appreciation for the sweetness I’ve been privileged enough to experience.
 The following is a subject for a longer, more thoughtful post, but I’ve been to many a Buddhist group in which Christianity was one-sightedly slammed as a harmful point of view held by narrow-minded people.  Now to repeat, I’m an atheist-Buddhist not a Christian-Buddhist, but I will also say the sweetest, kindest, most concerned, most interested-in-helping-others folks I knew in my youth came from that church.  (Which, fortunately, is a pro-choice anti-any form of discrimination sect of liberal-as-Norway sect of Protestantism)  And no matter what, there simply aren’t that many people in this world who gather with others for a couple hours once a week to try and put away thoughts of their career or their bank accounts or even their television shows and focus on trying to be better people.  I’m happy it’s a part of my history, especially because of the divergent views it has, in a way, forced me to not only accept but truly appreciate.
 Yes there are misconstructions everywhere and modern day Christmas was invented by advertisers.  But last night I watched a floppy haired thirteen year old blond boy help his seven year old sister light the four advent candles: Peace, Joy, Hope and Love.  Flanked by my healthy parents and my sweetheart brother, sitting on a pine pew clad in poinsettias, evergreen garlands, awash in candlelight I thought, well, this is a holiday message I think I can get behind.
 Merry Christmas Friends.
 Love,
  TF