Choosing Christmas Songs...

Choosing Christmas Songs

We arrive early to church every week. It's a habit we've kept since my wife was called to direct the music and we arrived early to set things up. She's long since relinquished that responsibility to others, but we keep going early. It guarantees us a place to sit on cushion-y chairs and it insures we won't be late for the meetings.

Since we arrive early, our youngest gets...shall we say...a little distracted. A month or so ago I looked up at the hymn number location thing on the wall and noticed it was cleared from the previous ward's meeting. "Hey, bud...do you want to help me out and put up the numbers?" I asked the little one. "Sure!" he replied. He surprised me by saying yes. He ran (literally...) up the isle, grabbed a folding chair and climbed right up. Stretching, he could just reach the top slot.

Since that time we've put up the numbers each Sunday. If there's ever a time I love singing in church, it's during the month of December. Since I was 21-years old, I have been involved in a choir. I've sung with professional organizations, university choirs, church choirs, bell choirs, and Christmas shows that have required a lot of singing at Christmas. I'm not one of those people who listens to Christmas music in July (but if I did, I would enjoy the music I'm sure...), but I feel I don't get enough time to sing those great songs only a few weeks out of the year.

Today I told my son to put 2 and 0 in all the spaces. Before the accompanist arrived we had to guess what the songs would be. He couldn't understand why we were going to sing song #20 more than once. There's only a few Sundays left to sing these songs. They're always a Christmas present to me, year after year...