Dear Eight-Pound Six-Ounce Baby Jesus

This year, I bought my first $25 fake, four-foot tall, pre-strung-with-colored-lights Christmas tree from Wal-Mart. I did pull out some of our regular family ornaments to personalize the thing, including a 24-year-old drugstore star, so beloved and such a staple of the experience that in its last appearance, it was snowballed in a wad of white icicle lights for a 10-foot tall tree. The weight of the old star made the wire tip of the Wal-Mart tree nod uneasily into the room.

Otherwise, I made no cookies, filled no stockings, bought only a couple of presents for Wolf and my little nephews, Candler and Oliver. I did not succeed in making Wolfie get a haircut. My hours at work lengthened and the only Christmas events that we took part in this year were at church.

It seemed like at St. Dunstan’s one day it was Sunday School season, and we had just hired our new choir director, Tom Gibbs. Then the next day Tom was asking me to play my flute on Christmas Eve. It all went by in a flash.

Because my heart warmed at the thought of seeing my lanky 19-year-old son playing the cello with the choir on Christmas Eve, I had actually put his name forward with Tom as a candidate. After they met at the church one Saturday to go over Wolfie’s music, about a week later, Tim was tapping me on the shoulder, telling me Tom Gibbs wants to see me.

I was curious until Tom greeted me with his warm smile and said that he understood that I was a “professional flutist,” according to Wolfie, and perhaps I would also be willing to play a couple of pieces on Christmas Eve? Well, I hadn’t played since college and my “professional” career entailed a couple of years of music school and a few pay checks from the smallest, least-known, not-really-at-all-professional symphony, in the world.

From then on, about a month before Christmas Eve, the few precious spare minutes I had after work were not spent in the mall or cleaning and decorating the house, or wrapping presents. When I got home on most days, I ran upstairs to play some scales and long tones, work out the kinks in my relationship with an instrument that I have all but abandoned for 20 years. It’s amazing what fingers will remember. After warming up, I spent the rest of my time going through the music with the funky rhythm, which I frankly was not feeling.

But St. Dunstan’s has a way of getting one ready for Christmas. One Wednesday night rehearsal, I lucked into 30-minutes of carol singing, which started getting me in the spirit.

There was the vestry Christmas party at Joe and Patricia’s house, on a Friday after work, in the rainy, cold, dark night. Joe’s lasagna, Lynn Hood’s secret lobster dip from Cosco, a veritable museum of crèches from around the world. Good cheer.

There was a final figure-out-the-funky-rhythm practice time with Tom in the sanctuary on the Saturday of Tim Black’s ordination. As we counted and ran through the rough spots, Gilda and Lee Morris were busily decorating the church Christmas tree in the background. There was a ladder up on the altar behind them, a bulb being changed in the high ceiling in advance of the Christmas Eve service.

Two hours later, probably the whole congregation was at the cathedral for Tim’s ordination as a deacon, which means he can now wear a white clergy collar. I sat by Joseph Henry on the one side and Christine Beard on the other. For a list of who was there, just look at the directory. We made a nice crowd.

Then there was the Christmas pageant, with its cherub-sized angels. That included Ginny Harris’ leadership in gathering materials and hands to remake all of the pageant costumes, which were lost earlier this year when the basement flooded.

So when Christmas Eve finally came, when Patricia stood up and marveled at her surroundings, the candles, the choirs, all of the pews filled by regular parishioners and visitors from everywhere, I believe she meant every word she said: “Everything about this evening is special – the music that our choirs and instrumentalists have practiced so many hours; the beautiful flowers and altar, arranged and prepared by faithful and loving hands; the glittering candlelight that adds to the magic and mystery of this night.”

Then she told the story of Ricky Bobby from the movie Talladega Nights: “But there is one scene in the movie that perhaps unintentionally makes a theological statement about the birth we are here to celebrate this night.

Ricky Bobby, the country’s most successful NASCAR driver, is seated with his family around a table laden with every fast food imaginable. Before the family digs in, he insists on saying grace.

“Dear Lord baby Jesus,” he begins, “we thank you so much for this bountiful harvest….”

Suddenly his wife interrupts. “You know, sweetie, Jesus did grow up,” she says. “You don’t always have to call him baby. It’s a bit odd and off putting to pray to a baby.”
Ricky Bobby will not be dissuaded.

“I like the Christmas Jesus best, and I’m saying grace,” he says. “When you say grace, you can say it to the grown-up Jesus or teen-aged Jesus or bearded Jesus or whoever you want.” Then he closes his eyes and begins again.

“Dear 8-pound, 6-ounce newborn baby infant Jesus, don’t even know a word yet, just a little infant, so cuddly, but still omnipotent…Thank you for all your power and grace, dear baby God. Amen.”

“One commentator calls it the “scandal of Christmas,” that God comes into human history completely helpless, as a newborn, and is placed in a cow’s feeding trough…. God slips unobtrusively into a remote province in a far corner of the empire, born to a peasant couple on the road, begging for the crudest shelter in which to spend the night.”

The point wasn’t lost. It isn’t the tree. It isn’t in a cathedral. It isn’t the Vatican. Or yards and yards of golden brocade and silver scepters. After the service, my whole family commented on Laura Withers’ voice—in fact, my older brother, Bird, thought she was what some might call a “ringer.” My stepfather, Ron, was stunned. He has a serious musical background and a good ear. And there is that fact that Laura’s voice is something like the sound crystal would make if it could breathe. When anyone hears her sing a solo the first time during a service, the sound isn’t easy to forget.

“I want her to sing at my funeral,” my mother, Mary, said. It is her highest compliment. No one takes more pleasure in planning their own funeral.

And now here I am, the day after Christmas, still chuckling a bit over the sermon, while Wolfie is outside working on his truck. It wasn’t by choice and there was definitely no grand design. This year, Christmas just happened and it was a nice surprise!