Fa la la la la more memories

Blame my sister, I’m getting nostalgic. I am so nostalgic I may even climb the attic stairs to get a few (very few) decorations and place them on the buffet with the Christmas presents.

Maybe. We will see.

Anyway, holiday nostalgia is ruling my thoughts right now. It started with this entry and then it got pushed further to the front when Austina wrote about my mother and the Christmas music. When I think about Christmas time, I can’t help but think about music and that is all my mother’s doing.

Before we became a full-fledged military family, we were just a normal pastor’s family. (warning: if you ever compare us to 7th Heaven I will kick you in the teeth… drastic? Maybe, but that is how much that show bugs me).

By normal pastor’s family, I mean that we girls sat on the front row while Daddy preached every Sunday, Momma played piano and lead the choir. At least, that always seemed normal to me. I was very surprised when I learned that all pastor’s wives did not play the piano and lead the choir. (I was also very surprised when I learned the sun did not revolve around me, but that is another childhood issue to be discussed at a later date.)

My mother is very gifted musically. She has led, sang, and managed several choirs. Nana, her mother, told a story once about how Momma was accompanying a high school choir and the director lost her place or something and Momma just kept up and played like it was the way the performance was meant to be.

My main memories of Christmas, music, and my mother are rooted in the time that we lived in Mesa, Arizona where Daddy was pastor of Hope Presbyterian Church. McMom & Daddy usually put together a Lessons and Carols service for Christmas Eve and that generally meant that a choir of congregation members would sing various songs beginning with Once in Royal David’s City and then ranging from old English Carols to the traditional carols sung in most churches and sometimes we would sing something from The Birthday Party. (Bonus points to anyone who buys that for me.)

Somewhere in the worship service, the part that I was usually drug kicking and screaming into was the song that the pastor’s daughters would sing. We usually sang the same song and once I finally found the lyrics last night, the tune hasn’t left my head. I think a few years I played the violin during the service as well.

Regardless of my preteen angst, the result was a worshipful experience that truly focused on the gift that is Jesus and I remember to this day.

One of my mother's dreams was realized the Christmas I was a senior in high school. She really wanted to attend Lessons and Carols at Kings College and since we were living the closest to England that we were probably going get (Germany) we spent our Christmas holiday at a B&B in Cambridge, shopping, touring, and standing in line for three hours in the wind, sleet, and snow.

My mother still likes to get us to sing around the piano when we are home for the holidays, something that I think is kind of cheesy yet I still find endearing. I admit that I miss taking the time during this month to attend random churches just to hear their choirs sing about the birth of Christ. And I don’t know the last time I went to a performance of the Messiah. But, as God as my witness (and the rest of the internet), I plan on finding more time for Christmas music during the holidays. It’s part of who I am and it should be a part of who Fuller is. Too bad it isn't in the attic where I can just drag it down for the next two weeks.