Every commercial, news article, and Holiday Card in the past few months starts with something annoyingly understated like “In these trying times…” or “Today, more so than ever…” or “This year has been a challenge.” Let’s just call it like it is. This year sucked. If your year was anything like mine, your life was picked up like a snow globe and shaken until it was unrecognizable. I’m thankful, however, that my friends and family have stayed safe and healthy. I hope the same for yours and I’m terribly sorry if you lost a loved one this year.
Holland Hall School, my alma mater, in Tulsa, OK celebrates Christmas with a special mass called Lessons and Carols. It is a tradition that has endured for over 50 years. This year, of course, the school was unable to present the service in person. Instead, they put together a wonderful video of current students and alumni performing beautiful arrangements of your favorite Christmas carols. I was honored to be asked to contribute to the project. You can find the full service here.
I am not religious but I love the celebration of Christmas. For me, Christmas is filled with memories of my family attending Christmas Eve mass in our tiny Episcopalian church in Oklahoma; luminaries lining the walk to the church front doors, the sanctuary gorgeously adorned in green and red, Mary Alice, the organist, tinkling her nails against the keys, and eventually the scratchy nap of my mother’s Christmas sweater as I fell asleep on her lap. Church hymns were my first exposure to live music and somehow Christmas carols always make me feel new again. Maybe they take me back to that tiny church and its twelve members who all made bets on how long it would take before the little blonde boy in the acolyte robe would give in and sneak to his family’s pew to fall asleep.
So, I hope you enjoy this Christmas Carol. If it doesn’t make you feel new again maybe it can at least inspire a good nap.
Thank you to Jesse Fry on piano, Kate Miner Moebel for access to the beautiful sanctuary at Highland Park Methodist Church and Kevin Hamm (Blue Letter Films) behind the camera.