Christmas Eve in Our Town

So, I meant to write about this a while ago, but never got around to it. Normally, if I wait too long, I don't get back around to writing about an event, but this one was unique enough to hold onto.

For Christmas Eve, we decided to go to the local community church, which, actually, is the only church in our town (there is another church building in town, but it is currently functioning as a duplex, not as a place of worship). The church had advertised its Christmas Eve meeting by setting up outside the post office a small plywood A-frame to which was stapled a letter-sized invitation to everyone.

We had been intending to go to church here ever since we moved into the town a year and a half ago, but we had never made it. That night, we dressed up in casual semi-formal clothes and hurried off so as not to be late. Turns out we were over-dressed and, though we arrived one or two minutes late, we were early. About 25 people in all showed up that night. 15 minutes after the advertised start time, the service began. A woman and a man co-led the service.

I want to pause here to give you the setting of the place: it is a wooden church, painted white on the outside, that is perhaps 60 years old. The floors were a little creaky, but were covered in red carpet. Two rows of pews face a podium which sits upon a slightly raised landing. On the right-hand side of the landing was a piano, before which Elizabeth now sat. On the left-hand side were a couple of electric guitars and a set of drums (apparently someone who attended there could play some instruments). The ceiling was vaulted, but, with old exposed beams, felt more like a nice barn than a cathedral. However, despite its rough appearance, it had a welcoming, non-pretentious warmth to it. In some ways the building reminded me of the local Grange halls near the tiny village in southwestern Colorado where I grew up. The community would hold square dances, charity dinners, auctions, and other gatherings in these halls. This little church felt sort of like a sanctified Grange hall.

"Unfortunately," the woman said as a disclaimer at she began the service, "we won't be having any music tonight. That is, unless one of you out there happens to play the piano." She chuckled at the suggestion, presumably because she was acquainted with everyone in the congregation besides us and knew that none of them played. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Elizabeth's hand slowly raising itself, almost unbidden, until the woman turned her attention to my shy wife.

"Really? You can play the piano?" the woman asked. Elizabeth nodded.

"And you'd be willing to play tonight?" Again Elizabeth nodded. "Thank the Lord!" the woman said. She gave Elizabeth the name of the first song, and then went about searching through the hymnal and scratching together a list of songs while someone else began reading the Christmas story found in Luke.

As Luke 2 and then Matthew 2 were read aloud, the reader would stop after each major plot occurrence and children would come forward with the appropriate ceramic figurines of a manger scene. Sonora had been given a wise man and when it came time to take up her piece, she proceeded with full concentration to the little stable that was set up on a card table in front of the podium and carefully set the stoic wise man in place, then returned to me.

At each of these pauses, we would sing a song to Elizabeth's piano playing. No one led the music; the woman would just sort of nod in Elizabeth's direction and then she would play a short introduction and then begin the song. I really could not believe that Elizabeth was playing at all. She is person who is generally reserved, afraid to call attention to herself. Recently, she became very sweaty, shaky, and rather nauseaus simply from giving a presentation to a group of women about sprouting. Most of the meeting I stared at her back in disbelief (After the meeting, when I expressed my surprise to her, she said "You can't have Christmas Eve with no music. That would just be sad.") In between songs, she would flip the hymnal open to the next song and brush her fingers silently across the keys in order to practice the song in her head. She played quite well the five or so songs that were given to her.

At the end of the meeting, the man leading the meeting called our attention to a cake at the front of the room. It was coated in white frosting and, written across the cake in red frosting were the words "Happy Birthday Jesus." He lit the fourteen or so candles (I have no idea how they chose the number of candles) and then called the kids up to blow out the candles. Sonora contributed by blowing on the elbow of the older girl in front of her.

Then we retired to an adjoining multi-purpose room where some tables had been set up, and we ate cake and drank water. No one approached us to ask our names or find out where we lived or to see if we would be coming back, or to talk to us at all. It was as if, somehow, they had expected a complete stranger and her family to appear unannounced and play the piano for the Christmas Eve service.

Although the service was poorly planned and poorly attended, I was impressed by a congregation that has the faith to produce, out of thin air and my normally shy wife, a musician to play for their Christmas program.