JOY TO THE WORLD

     For most of my life, I've been less than enthusiastic about celebrating Christmas, especially the part about Santa Claus, and the highly-commercialized, gift-giving thing. No doubt, that's partially due to the fact that my birth name is Rudolf, which has lead to lots of teasing every December about pulling a sleigh full of presents. And then there's the fact that I was born in Holland, where gifts were given on St. Nicholas Day (December 6), never on Christmas, which was strictly a religious holiday.

YOUNGER DAYS

     I was five years old when we had our first Christmas in America, too young to comprehend the difference between Sinterklaas and Santa Claus. But by the following December, I was definitely old enough to understand that my parents were struggling financially, and that there wasn't enough money for toys, like the other kids in the neighborhood received. Somehow, in the process, I skipped right over the whole Santa Claus myth, and got an early start on having a jaundiced view of Christmas presents.

     But the one thing I always loved about Christmas was singing carols. Our family faithfully attended the First Protestant United Church of Christ (Evangelical and Reformed) in New Braunfels, where I quickly became part of the Children's Choir. Much as I loved singing, most of those Protestant hymns felt pretty boring and hard to sing. But, somehow, the Christmas songs always seemed to turn the whole congregation into a choir that really made the rafters ring. Plus, going caroling around town was so much fun, even without the hot chocolate and cookies that we received in the process.

DIFFERENT WAYS

    I always took spirituality seriously, and by the time I graduated from high school, I'd already rejected many of the Biblical stories we'd been taught in Confirmation Class, including the Virgin Birth, the Nativity narrative and the Resurrection, which no longer made sense to my critical, questioning mind. Consequently, it became difficult to sing Christmas carols with any conviction, and I got pretty cynical about them, too.

    It was more than thirty years later, after I began working with the Celebration Circle and started taking the liberty of altering lyrics to traditional hymns to make them more theologically inclusive, that I was able to reconnect with the power of singing Christmas carols. Even so, I was never really able to recapture that joyful feeling of around singing them - until this year.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS

    As a result of taking a class in New Testament history at Trinity University this fall, I have a renewed appreciation for the deep, abiding sense of mystery surrounding the Bible, and fewer judgments about it. That made it easier for me to include a few more Christmas songs than I normally would have in our Underground Sounds Solstice concert in the Cave Without a Name last week. And I couldn't help but notice how enthusiastically the audience sang along, and how much joy came with it.

     Then, a few days ago, I was invited to spend an afternoon playing guitar and singing with a band that the City of San Antonio had hired to perform Christmas carols on a riverboat on the Riverwalk. It was so much fun watching thousands of faces light up with pleasure, all up and down the river, as those familiar strains rang out across the water, catching random strangers off guard, making them smile and sing along in "merry measure." My heart was soaring!

    All of which is to say that I'm really looking forward to singing more of those favorite carols with my family around the dinner table this weekend, at my father's Protestant church on Christmas Eve and in the Celebration Circle this Sunday. In a world of all too many woes and worries, why NOT sing, "Joy to the World?"

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and Happy, Healthy New Year,

     Rudi

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