UBC Advent Devotional

Meditation Seventeen Tuesday, December 13 My lifetime second favorite book, Little Women, begins with Jo March’s lament, “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.”

As much as I admire Jo, I beg to differ. Instead, I’d make a serious contention that Christmas can come as long as there is music.

This first came to my attention when my father commented one Christmas Eve that he had not heard enough Christmas music. I was taken aback. This was a man who played no musical instrument and who sang off-key about a quarter beat behind everybody else.

Before the day of iPods and iTunes – or even stereos - Daddy got whatever was playing on the radio; and an unusually busy December had left little time for listening. This musicloving Baptist preacher got up Christmas morning and turned on the radio, telling us he hoped to get his fill of carols. As he turned it off that night to go to bed, he breathed a sigh of relief. “It’s okay,” he said, “I’m satisfied.” I have noticed that Daddy is not alone in needing the music of Christmas to have a good one.

In our first Christmas across an ocean in France, we faced a budget that looked a lot like Jo March’s. We made a deal that our Christmas present to each other would be tickets to hear the Paris Opera perform The Messiah. Every year as I recall special Christmases past, I still feel the crisp cold as we rode the Metro downtown. I see the gazillion tiny white lights outlining the Eiffel Tower, the Etoile, and all the buildings downtown. And I hear, “For unto us a child is born...unto us a Son is given....” It was a memorable Christmas indeed.

My second grade teacher colleague and I took our classes to sing carols at the Fort Polk Officers Club one Christmas season. In the beginning, there were the smiles duly merited by cute kids and laughter over some of the fun songs of Christmas. But the group quieted to reverence as the children sang their final song, “What can I give Him poor as I am?...What can I give Him? Give Him my heart.”

In churches, civic meetings, schools, and even piped in at the mall, music reminds us of the old story that makes it Christmas. As I think about that beloved story again this Christmas, it seems to me that God knew the importance of song all along. He did send the angel chorus to make the first announcement. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

Thanks be to God who hears our joyous noel even if we sing off-key and half a beat behind everybody else.

Virginia Butler