There was a time in my life when Christmas was about the magic. There was Santa, and modest presents, the kind where when you went to Sunday School and they handed out little brown sacks with an orange inside, possibly a bit of candy, a pencil, or a tiny toy, then topped off with peanuts, it was a magic event. Somebody gave me something! Wow! Mom raised us on her post-depression budget, all our lives for that matter, and a tiny gift counted!
Christmas magic was about the stories, the magic star, the angels, all the lights, and hiking home over snow so cold up in northern Minnesota that it went crisp! crisp! crisp! for every step. If we were lucky enough, there would be a few snowfalls with higher temperatures so it would stick together for snowmen, snowballs, forts, and still let us go sledding without courting frostbite. Now that right there was some magic! Of course, we didn't know yet that snow pants and puffy mittens and three extra layers and face scarves weren't fashionable. All of it simply allowed us to continue through winters.
As I grew older, the magic of Christmas was about the music. Being a Methodist meant that when in church, we SANG! Not wimpy mumbles chasing a tune, but we actually made music. And I was always in the choir, one blessed in my teenage years with a great director, Jewell Shannon, our minister's wife, who challenged us and taught us with music we didn't always realize was supposed to be difficult. There were always concerts in church and school, back then making no pretense of being anything other than Christian, and so many carols over so many years meant that I knew multiple verses instead of the one most people can barely remember the words to, and could even sing descants to some with what passed for a soprano voice. That church choir director took a tenor part and raised it an octave for us sopranos. She even gave me a solo one year, something called a "Mexican Christmas Carol", which I've only heard once since, and lost the words to decades ago. The music is just fine. thank you, still there just by thinking of it. There is a repeated line of "then rejoice and sing, all ye children tonight." Every time I look for it, something else claims to be it but isn't. Even Google, with it's 30,000,000 answers to everything, can't find it, neither by title or those few lyrics.
The children's magic of Christmas switched from mine to being for my kids, as long as they would let me try to make it for them. Even that faded, much too quickly for me. My most magical memory of that time was when Steph was either two or three. I had found a good kids' book on the Nutcracker story, and followed that up with taking her to the ballet in Minneapolis. It could have ended there, but we always went down to the farm in Fairmont to spend time with my husband's family. There happened to be a thunderstorm that afternoon, leaving everything coated in ice. After dark, the farm's yard lights turned everything they reached into a fairyland straight from the design sets of The Nutcracker. Well, better, but who could duplicate this? Leaving her baby brother with the family, we two bundled up and went out to enjoy the magic of it. By then we had the addition of a heavy fog, muting sounds and making all unreal. Their driveway out to the highway sloped just enough for a fun toboggan ride for a little kid, and I pulled her most of the rest of the way out to the highway. A car passed every two or three minutes, adding a whole new layer of otherness to the night. I hope the memory stayed with her, but it stays with me still, just as magical as then. I still try to catch some airing of The Nutcracker nearly every year, hoping some of that magic can be savored again. As for Steph, a second in-house performance a few years later when I took her along with both her brothers, Paul just over a month old, was more than enough, and she begged off from being "dragged along" any more. It occurs to me to wonder sometimes if the performances just can't live up to some winter magic.
I no longer believed in the Christmas story as anything other than a much embellished fable, used by The Church to recruit members by appropriating everybody else's rituals into the mix to make it seem like changing their old ways wasn't actually a big loss because they still....fill in the blanks. It became about power and greed and so many other things they mixed in that The Church lost its credibility with me. It has accumulated a long history of having so many things needing forgiveness, and I'm not the one to give it to them.
The magic went away.
Decades of life happened, and after a while the music went away. When it came back, it was other people's music to create and perform, mine to listen to. I didn't really sing for so long I recently decided I couldn't anymore. Carry a tune? Uh-uh. Sour notes, wavering, croaking, and the note I was reaching for would evaporate before its end in a puff of air. So I quit trying. I couldn't stand to hear what I was making.
KBAQ (pronounced K Bach) is playing carols on the air these last couple weeks. Lots of them. Steve asked me to drive him to the grocery store late last night, late to avoid others, and me driving because I still have decent night vision. I waited in the car and listened to the music. It was cold so the car was running intermittently to keep me warm. It was almost like singing in the shower, private and lots of white noise to disguise whatever I was doing. So I joined in, halting at first, but I still know the carols, many through several verses.
I was surprised at how easy it was to sing along. Yes, there were a few breaks and sour notes, but then something changed. My voice was back, so long as I didn't try to pass judgment on its quality, just join in. I sometimes switched octaves since my range is shot, but that's easy with music heard every year of one's life. At least, when one was used to singing them most of those years. Eventually I popped up into the high ranges and started hitting every note. I haven't hit some of them for decades. I wasn't pushing it, just blending in, amazed at the ability so easily (?) returned after so many years. Eventually I let it go, knowing those muscles would be complaining soundly for days if I didn't ease off. It was about the same time that particular segment of carols quit. The announcer came on and informed me I'd just been singing along with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir!
Maybe the real magic of Christmas is in the music. Maybe that's all the magic the world needs, any time, any reason. Maybe all the world will get.
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