It is late on Christmas Eve on Sand Point, and all is quiet. Of the 20-odd houses on the point, only two are lit, mine and my neighbor’s. The other owners are in Florida and Texas and Connecticut and other places in the lower latitudes. It is 24 degrees here now, and the ground is snow-covered, just enough to make it a white Christmas.
Across the tidal river to the north one house has Christmas lights in the windows, and their reflection on the water is picturesque. I have two white stars in my windows, and the lights are on at the front entrance, so that those people across the river have something to look at. To the south lies the Atlantic. You can hear the surf, because it is almost high tide, but beyond the windows there is only blackness.
Earlier, I went to Mass at St. Martha’s, in Kennebunk. I arrived at least 15 minutes before Mass was supposed to start, but I was still too late. The large parking lot was filled, so that I had to park a few blocks from the church. Inside, it was jam-packed, not just in the church proper, but in the adjoining spaces as well. Father Tom Murphy said the Mass, and a red-and-black-robed choir, about 15 voices strong, sang Christmas hymns. Somehow I found a few square feet to inhabit, amid a sea of people, many in wheelchairs. Father Tom’s brief but eloquent sermon, the choir’s note-perfect singing, and the sensation of being present at an Event were all very moving.
Tonight I have been watching the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s Christmas Eve concert. I have seen it before, about a week ago, but it was good enough for a reprise. There is something about a large, well-trained chorus that raises goosebumps on me - but only if there are both male and female voices. I have heard good ladies’ choruses and good male choruses, but only a mixed chorus sounds complete to these ears. And the Mormon Choir is as good as it gets. A highlight of tonight’s concert was a recitation by historian David McCullough, who recounted Churchill’s visit to Washington on Christmas 1941, only weeks after Pearl Harbor. McCullough claimed that Churchill, hearing O Little Town of Bethlehem sung on Christmas Eve, said that he had never the hymn before. I thought that unlikely, so I raced to my library and quickly found the episode in Churchill’s history of WWII, and – as I should have known – McCullough was right. Another of McCullough’s stories illuminated the origins of I’ll Be Home for Christmas, surely one of the best of the Christmas ballads.
Now Christmas Day is only minutes away, so I will wish everyone who takes the trouble to read these scribblings a blessed Christmas and a happy new year.
