Not that I didn’t love Christmas Eve.
Christmas Eve always was to me what Super Bowl Sunday is to the members of the competing teams. So much effort, so much anxiety and so much anticipation went into preparing for somewhere between three and seven worship services (yes — one year, when it fell on a Sunday, I led six worship services plus a wedding in between!).
Not only did I develop an adrenaline rush as I attended to the crazy details (“Did we print enough bulletins?” “Will the acolytes all show up on time?” “Where are the extra chairs for narthex seating?) and not only did I thrill to see the pews filled and hear the singing in fortissimo — I got my biggest thrill out of sharing the Good News with the C & E Christians — the Christmas-and-Easter attendees. I always poured heart, mind, and much prayer into preparing that meditation in the hope that the Word and Spirit would capture the hearts and minds of the hearers.
The best Christmas Eve ever came in 2004 when a blanket of snow fell during those evening services, which in Houston, Texas, turned the “Silent Night, Holy Night” candle-lit reverence into revelry as worshipers headed from sanctuary through the all-glass narthex into the winter wonderland. A few snowballs lobbed at worshipers landed in the narthex, too.
Without fail I was the last to leave the building after the final, midnight service. Not only did I enjoy greeting all the attendees and then thanking the lingering musicians and ushers. I just had to enjoy some of the afterglow.
Finally, I shut off the lights and locked the doors to head home. The kids were tucked into bed with visions of Cabbage Patch dolls and Nintendo games dancing in their heads. Barbie usually was asleep, too, although a few times she was knee-deep in gift wrap, waiting for me to assemble the bike or train set.
Our own morning was joy-filled as the four of us flooded one another with gifts. We were generous to a fault — though we felt no pangs of guilt.
Then our attention turned to preparing the turkey and all the fixings, and that’s where the day grew more pensive. Barbie and I both had come from large families with extended relatives all descending upon the home for the Christmas feast. Now we were living as the basic nuclear family — two adults, two children — with the nearest relative living about a thousand miles away.
Some years we would get invited to a church member’s home for the meal. Other years we welcomed friends to our table. Some years we shared the meal with just the four of us. We would call our families of origin and struggle to hear the conversation as the background laughter drowned out the squeaky voice of our four-year-old niece or six-year-old nephew. They would cut off the conversation to head outside to sing Christmas carols through the neighborhood, going door-to-door — an old Haberer family tradition. After hanging up the phone we would settle down to a quiet evening.
One year we determined not to be left out entirely. After opening our gifts we jumped in the car and drove 25 hours north — from 80 degrees Florida to 8 degrees Vermont — to celebrate a family Christmas dinner a day late. That, by the way, was the same year that I had led seven Christmas Eve services.
But for the most part, our Christmas afternoons were spent away from the families. As were our Easter Sundays. The call of God — enthusiastically followed — brought many privileges, but it exacted some costs, too, one of which was paid on Christmas afternoons.
Then again, I never spent a holiday on foreign soil serving as a global mission partner or soldier or sailor or nurse or educator. Remember them this holiday season!
While my time at the Outlook is affording the opportunity for more mobility on the holidays, I anticipate a return to the pastorate someday — most likely in retirement — and with that, the hope that the kids and grandkids will be close enough to visit us on the holidays. In either case the joy of the core celebration, the good news of Emmanuel, will ring out above all revelry and reverence, above all caroling, feasting, and even pensiveness.
— JHH
