“The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight.”
If you just sang those words in your head as you read them, this may be a column for you.
If not, no worries, you can keep reading too.
That line is the final stanza of the first verse of “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”
Some people really enjoy Christmas music and others don’t.
I am firmly among the fans of Christmas music.
But why do I enjoy Christmas music so much?
I think one big reason is that, overall, Christmas music is the same songs every year and we only hear them a few weeks each year.
There’s something about hearing the same songs you heard as a child, and teenager, and maybe young parent, or even proud grandparent, played and sung again and again each year that is really meaningful.
When we hear these familiar songs, many of us are taken back years or decades, and often the songs bring back strong memories.
I think my first Christmas music-related memory must be from about 1984.
I remember sitting in a front pew at church at one of my first Christmas programs.
I distinctly remember listening to the organ play “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing” as I looked up at the light fixtures and wood ceiling so far above my head.
I also remember walking out of church that night after the program.
I had my brown paper bag, filled with peanuts, an apple, a candy bar and a paper nativity scene from Lutheran Brotherhood in hand while I looked at the tall evergreen tree one block down the hill filled with Christmas lights.
I even remember where our car was parked and that Mom drove us by the tree on Freeman Street on the way home.
My guess is you might have similar memories and that music may be involved.
Now 35 Christmases later, that tree is gone and, because of remodeling, those light fixtures and even that pew is gone.
The treat bags are also no more.
But I still hear the organ play “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” each year and still think of that night.
Today kids don’t get those impossible-to-assemble nativity scenes, but they might be making memories of the nativity scene with real actors and animals the church stages in the parking lot each year.
That’s this Sunday, by the way.
Many older kids will have memories of singing “O Holy Night” each year during the LHS choir concert.
That’s tonight (Thursday), by the way.
And those songs and those memories will endure every December to come.
No matter how much changes in life from year to year and decade to decade, those Christmas songs will be sung and heard.
For many of us, the hopes and fears of all the years are met in Christmas songs, the messages that they share and the memories that they hold.
Enjoy them in the weeks, years and decades ahead.
Merry Christmas!