Christmas, and the Most Basic Human Impulse
is to LOVE.
It is predawn Christmas morning ‘25 as I write this, and I’ve been up for hours. I have always risen first on Christmas morning, even when the kids were young; even for the decades I led Midnight Christmas Eve Candlelight services and didn’t get home until the wee hours.
Soulmate smiles at this, my boyish exuberance on this shimmering day. Well, she’ll smile at it in a few hours. For now, it is me, the two doodles and our visiting grandterrier.
And it is Christmas.
We are a few days past Winter Solstice, so the planet faithfully adds just a little bit of light each day to this cold, persistent darkness.
When I was actively pastoring, we sang Christmas carols all through Advent. Egregious, I know, to you peppermint sticklers.
I thought at the time that everywhere else people went throughout December they heard these wonderful songs and were encouraged to fill with Spirit. Why hold back in church, of all places? We are built to be carriers of Hope, Peace, Joy and Love, are we not? Shall we keep locked up for four weeks what the world needs right this very minute?
Still, there was one carol I always reserved for the opening of Christmas Eve services: O Come, All Ye Faithful. It is this call to gather that is Yuletide commencement for me. Those who were toward the front of the sanctuary could see how far I’d get in the verses before I’d cease singing and let a few deep-well tears rise and roll down (seldom past Sing choir of angels, rarely as far as Yea, Lord we greet thee, and I absolutely never made it to The God Chord at Word of the Father).
Last night at 1st Congregational Canandaigua proved that this still happens when I am merely attending services. My very soul is reached and pulled forth through my tear ducts by this sung description of what we are actually doing - the full throated declaration that we gather faithful, joyful and triumphant in these darkest days, and the better angels of our nature sing in exultation, calling forth our foundational human impulse to LOVE, and to do so communally.
I guess I just want to say that you and I and the rest of the natural world are beautiful, regardless. Angelic, even, at critical moments.
The darkness knows we’re coming, and we’re loving it back to a light born this happy morning.
Merry Christmas, Corey! Thanks for your reflections. For me the tear-jerker is always a cappella Silent Night by candlelight. Love from Austin.
Merry Christmas Corey