Applause at Christmas

Christ In Winter: reflections on faith from a place of winter for the years of winter…

I have been applauded only twice in church, church applause being reserved for musicians and children, and both of those occasions were at Christmas, perhaps because Christmas is a season that features musicians and children, and the folks were already in the mood to applaud.

The first was Forsythe Methodist, open country, about three miles out of Oakland City, IN. We had moved there in March after I was the young shepherd in the East Park Methodist Christmas play in Indianapolis. I became a real shepherd, not of sheep, but cows and pigs and chickens. Later, when I was a freshman at IU, I was asked to be the narrator for the Christmas program at Forsythe. I was a little late for rehearsal, having hitchhiked down from Bloomington after my last class, and when I walked in, all the gathered children, perhaps 30, plus a choir put together for the occasion, since Forsythe was too small to have a choir for ordinary time, spontaneously broke into applause. I was considerably embarrassed and tremendously pleased. Forsythe had always accepted me, and now it applauded me, just for showing up.

My second occasion of applause was a Christmas at Wesley UMC in Charleston, IL. On Christmas Sunday, I made one of those stupid-preacher mistakes, the ones that are obviously mistakes after you’ve done them but which you don’t recognize as such beforehand. The children and I were lighting the Advent wreath and the Christ candle during “Special Time With Children.” I asked for volunteers. We got all the candles lighted. But there were still little hands up, volunteering, but no more candles. I snuffed out the candles and asked if anyone else would like to help light things up. The congregation broke into applause. [1] We re-lighted, with new volunteers. We kept repeating that until every child had lighted one of the candles.

In those occasions of applause, I learned the true meaning of Christmas: everybody should have a chance at sharing the light, and if you show up late, you’ll find out how folks really feel about you.

JRMcF

[1] I later learned that it was Art Snider, an academic counselor at Eastern IL U, who started the applause. He recently told me, “I always felt sorry for you. You hated administration so much, and the church was so big and the staff so small, you had to do a lot of it. I thought you should have staff members to do that stuff, so you could concentrate on preaching and pastoring, like Harry Emerson Fosdick at Riverside Church in New York.” It’s nice to think that someone once thought of me in the same sentence as HEF.

{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

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