Third Sunday in Advent, December 10, 2016

                Christmas music via the radio or streamed on-line is fertile ground for ear-worms – those words and tunes which you can’t get out of your head once they worm their way in.  

I’ve got chestnuts roasting on an open fire or sleigh bells jing-jing-jingling, or Rudolph with his nose-so-bright burned into my memory bank. I really don’t to want to Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow! But I keep humming it anyway. Over and over and over again.

Frosty won’t stop thumpity-thump-thumping in my mind.

Somebody, please take the little drummer boy’s drum sticks away; no more rumpa-pum-pum.

I’ve rocked around the Christmas tree until my legs gave out.

Help, I’m stuck in a Christmas music vortex and I can’t get out.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like Christmas music, both secular and religious Christmas music. Give me Bing Crosby, Perry Como (I love his version of Ave Maria) or Frank Sinatra singing a Christmas classic. This week, I heard the great Ella Fitzgerald sing a version of Silent Night that knocked my socks off. But who knew that every music artist that has ever lived has done a version of Mel Torme’s The Christmas Song? And it almost seems that I have heard them all in the past week. Please keep Jack frost from nipping at my nose one more time.

Seriously, music is very much a part of the Christmas Story, ever since Mary put her tender young feelings into a psalm of praise, “My soul magnifies the Lord…,” (Luke 1: 46 -55) or Zechariah added his creaky, old voice to the Christmas chorus, “Blessed be the God of Israel…,” (Luke 1:67). The sleepy shepherds were the audience for a heavenly host singing, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours,” (Luke 2:14).  I wouldn’t wonder if they didn’t get that tune or words out of their heads any time soon.

Our expressions of faith are not always rendered in stuffy dogma and dry theological premises. Faith comes alive in poetry, music, art, and deeply personal outbursts of beauty and creative imaginations.  Be it George Handel’s classic Messiah or Mahalia Jackson Christmas comes alive through such talent and gifts.  But even the most out-of-tune voice will loudly join in a Christmas song like Joy to the World without embarrassment.  Nobody cares whether you’re on key or not.

I know that a lot of Christmas music becomes noisy, background music while we shop. We stop listening and tune it out. But every once in a while, there will be a Christmas song that stops me in the aisle for a moment and catches my attention. More than likely it will come back to me during the day. I will sing some of the words to myself, and a little piece of Christmas sticks to me like tinsel on a Christmas tree.

Christmas music evokes memories and feelings, calms frayed nerves, gives us inner harmony, stirs joy, makes us smile, is shared with others and opens the door to Christmas celebrations.

So, turn the radio on; sing along at the top of your lungs; and somebody, please pass the chestnuts.

Dale