The Covid pandemic has caused the global community to give up a great deal in recent months.  Horrific numbers of folks have suffered; many are infected; some, as we painfully know, have died.  While hotly contested, we are beginning to acknowledge that social distancing, masks, frequent handwashing, and even quarantining are not simply irritating inconveniences but significant practices for personal and public safety.  Like it or not, mom’s and dad’s lectures on hygiene were important lessons for life.

            Christmas will be different this year, no doubt about it.  As seven of us gathered last Sunday and again this Thursday to record Advent IV and Christmas Eve for sharing with the Mt. Horeb community, there was no missing it.  The excitement, glitz, and glitter of people gathering, the roar and pomp of organ and brass, carols sung, candlelight, and the Word about the birth of our salvation are what we expect as fitting trappings for these holy days.  In the almost empty church, much was missing in action.  Yet, to be honest, these holy days can become an unholy daze for the same folks who prepare, lead, and attend — all ye faithful — the services of the Advent-Christmas-Epiphany season.  If memory serves, last year the choir was weary from chronic colds and laryngitis as they tried to master anthems and solos old and new while dealing with hacking and catarrh.  Those with weekly liturgical responsibilities survived bouts of anxiety about when and which candles to light.  Congregational members rejoiced or fretted that their favorite carols were or were not sung.  Altar guild members and others who volunteer put in long hours planning, decorating, and cleaning, knowing all along that there were meals waiting to be prepared at home as the happy chaos of family gatherings loomed.  Travel demands complicated extended families’ lives considerably.

            Nevertheless, Covid may help us rediscover what can inspire and motivate us in our preparations, despite the seasonal busyness which distracts and comes close to incapacitating folks.  What is it that really IS holy in the flurry and clutter of our own making, partly absent in the eerie quiet of this year?

            The beloved carol, Silent Night, is what finally gets me back on course.  It is not my most favorite, but its integrity is bound up intimately with its simplicity.  Fr. Joseph Mohr, having survived the horrors of war and ill health, penned the carol in 1816. Several years later, he asked his friend Franz Gruber, to compose a melody for it.  Legend has it that the parish organ had ceased to work – which may or not be true – but Gruber obliged and penned the beloved melody in the style of an Austrian folk dance, accompanied by guitar.  Gruber and Mohr sang it at the Christmas Eve Mass, and the rest is a fascinating history.

            Silent Night gets me back on course because I get to let go.  The organ and brass may roar and thunder joyous fanfares, but when all has been said and done, we stand together in a darkened church and finally sing, unaccompanied save for each other’s presence.  There is no sweeter music nor clearer celebration of Jesus’ birth.

            Big services, festive music, gorgeous appointments, and candles all require folks toting around a lot of responsibility and control.  Responsibility and control can deceive us, for we run the danger of thinking It won’t get done!!! if we don’t do it My Way!  Yet Advent and Christmas are NOT about what we do – Christmas will occur, thank you very much, because at its heart Christmas is what GOD is doing, even now.  Mary and Joseph also had to learn that the hard way the first Christmas Eve.

            A couple scramble in Bethlehem to find a place to stay – the baby is coming!!!  Yet, the only room available is a cattle stall, not what a mother in delivery needs to hear.  Shepherds are fear-struck at an angelic outburst but told to settle down and share the good news.  They find the forlorn couple with a newborn and tell them what the angels have announced.  The Christmas Eve gospel [Luke 2:1-20] reminds us that Mary and Joseph are amazed at the angelic tidings, hunkered down in the manger.  Mary continues to ponder what is unfolding for them.  The second reading [Titus 2:11-14] tells us that God has done this almost unfathomable thing in a dirty barn shared with livestock to save a broken and dying creation.  The Prophet Isaiah already has set the stage: “…people who have sat in darkness have seen a great light” [Isaiah 9:2-7].  There is no pomp and ceremony, no glitz and glitter, no party hats and champagne.  What remains at the heart of Christmas is the love of God, bundled as a baby, and placed in the arms of a bewildered world needing some time to ponder.

            If we let go long enough, we may remember what remains most dear to us:  the sound of a congregation singing a carol unaccompanied, memories of family and friends, a snowy midnight in Germany, tower bells beginning to peal the announcement of a birth, cookies my sainted grandmother baked.  Feel free to add to the list…