“Silent night … holy night … all is calm …” The young voices rose in heartbreaking unison before a small audience of mostly elderly churchgoers, but all was not, in fact, calm.
Dark looks were shooting back and forth between the choir director and two recalcitrant children. Shortly before the group of singers had stepped to the front of the room to begin caroling, the choir director had tapped two 10-year-olds on their shoulders and asked them to be ready to sing certain verses solo. It was an honor, and well deserved: Both the boy and girl had exceptionally pure, sweet voices.
But to her surprise, very much not in the Christmas spirit, both children had frowned and shaken their heads, no. They didn’t want to. They didn’t feel like it. They refused.
“What?” she whispered, for a moment incredulous. Then her eyes narrowed. “Well, you need to,” she said.
Now, as “Silent Night” unfurled, the two 10-year-olds were singing with thunderous, unseasonal expressions on their faces. Around them, other boys and girls warbled away obliviously.
Members of the audience beamed at the young entertainers, some joining in. You could not have hoped to see a warmer or pleasanter multigenerational Christmas party in a Currier and Ives print, provided you overlooked the covert, furious glares streaking back and forth.
“… Slee-eep in heavenly peeeeace …”
As the words of the first verse died away, the choir director looked meaningfully at the boy. The other children waited, a little confused, as the moment of silence began to stretch out.
The boy held the director’s eyes, and you could see that he was still trying to rebel, but then his training — or maybe his obedient nature — kicked in, and his lips began to move.
“Silent night, holy night!” he sang, “Shepherds quake at the sight …”
Admiring sighs came from the audience. A child’s voice raised in a hymn, when it is a good voice, really is a thing of loveliness. The choir director smiled at the boy, who managed, while singing, to send a little smirk her way that seemed to say, “Oh very well, you win.”
Watching this drama take place, as I did, made me laugh inwardly with a little rue and a lot of fondness at the way we all try to get Christmas “right.” Here, for instance, were assembled all the ingredients for a sugary Yuletide cliche: the girls and boys scrubbed clean and dressed in festive attire, a smiling audience of old-age pensioners, poinsettias and candles and trays of delicacies. Yet, as in the kitchen, human perversity can doom even the most apparently foolproof recipe. And as the songs continued, it was clear that something was still curdled.
“… In excelsis Dee-eeoo,” the children sang.
It was the moment when the 10-year-old girl was supposed to go solo. The choir director looked over, her mouth silently forming the words, “Come to Bethlehem and see …”
Yet there was only silence. “No,” the stubborn singer hissed, shaking her head crossly at her songbook.
The choir director, bless her, didn’t let another moment pass.
“Everyone!” she cried cheerfully, and we all sang:
“Come to Bethlehem and see … Christ whose birth the angels sing. Come adore on bended knee … Christ the lord the newborn king. Gloooooria …”
Merry Christmas!
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
