This was the third year in a row our Catholic parish’s music director agreed to collaborate with my wife and me on a children’s choir for the 4:30 p.m. Christmas Eve Mass. Pulling it off requires three one-hour-long rehearsals in December; familiar repertoire with maybe one adventurous selection at most; and letting the kids dress in whatever their family defines as “Christmas best” for the Mass as long as this attire doesn’t include any literal blinking lights. We also sing “Feliz Navidad” as a postlude.
The kids are masters at distinguishing between the two rough genres of traditional Christmas hymns, which are “we’re happy about Jesus being born and we’re going to tell you about it” and “shhh, the baby is trying to sleep.” This first category of song comprises classics like “Go Tell it On a Mountain,” “O Come All Ye Faithful” and “Joy to the World.” These latter two hymns each include a line in their refrains that gets repeated three times (“o come, let us adore him” and “and heav’n and nature sing,” respectively), which allows the choir to perform our signature musical move: Sing the line medium-loud the first time, plain loud the second time, and beltingly loud the third time.
At other times during the Mass, it’s fun to watch the kids try so hard to sing in a gentle lullaby style for “Silent Night” and “Away in a Manger.” They are very serious about not waking the baby up. The vocabulary in all these hymns is old-fashioned and beyond all of us, but the kids get what’s happening. The melodies and tempos tip them off. Not to mention the fact that the manger with its animals and angels and newborn is an absolute feast for a children’s imagination. Christmas is a holiday for children for the Santa and presents reasons, yes, but since it’s a feast that celebrates the birth of a baby, celebrates God-as-child, it is therefore their own special moment in faith terms. They intuit this truth. They are proud to lead the church in song on their big day.
I like intellectually puzzling over the theological mystery of the Incarnation as much as anyone, but a children’s choir-style approach to Christmas has a lot going for it, especially at the end of this long year when my brain is tired: The correct way to celebrate the birth of Jesus is to whoop it up some of the time and get quiet other times. Remember the Lord comes as a helpless baby, not an enthroned king imprisoning people he doesn’t like. Everyone’s got a job to do when it comes to welcoming Jesus. It’s special so dress up nice. Sing with a heart as full as if you were singing to your own baby brother or sister, because you are.
Merry Christmas from all of us at the Jesuit Media Lab.
