Christmases in the Tropics

For years my family lived in the tropics, and at Christmastime, with the weather defiantly non-snowy, and for weeks preceding the season, we would join with everybody around us in the frenzy of getting ready for the holiday: music and drama. One of my earliest memories of Christmas was attending a carol service, and a performance of Adam's Cantique de Noel. Oh, how heavenly to the ears of a little person of seven or eight, who knew nothing of schmalz! I still adore that song, so naive, so earnest, so easy to ridicule! To me it still represents the season.

At school, too the choir began rehearsing in late September for the Christmas carols, patterned after the annual event at King's College, Cambridge. I first joined that hallowed group, the College Choir, in 7th grade. The choirmaster was an enthusiastic dreamer. (I later learned that he was not so enchanted with the King's College pattern as I had assumed, and was seeking something more in tune with the society around us.) That first carol service in which I sang was like a visit to another planet, a dream!

The following year, the fact that I had some knowledge of music was discovered, and I was assigned to teach the tenors and the bases their parts in Rubbra's "Dormi Jesu," a delicate and sombre lullaby that probably reflected more of Rubbra's despair than the worry of the poor Virgin herself. (The lovely song 'Sweet was the song the Virgin Sung' seems to capture the mood much more convincingly, but what do we know of the thoughts and fears of a first century child-mother?)  Thus were laid the seeds of a short-lived spell as a coach for several choirs, which I abandoned simply because I could not for the life of me keep time! But for the first thirty years of my life, at Christmas time I was totally immersed in music, both performance and appreciation.

 It was in grade nine that our old choirmaster took a year's absence, and a teacher newly returned from England was assigned the job. One miraculous day in October, we learned two chorales from Bach's Christmas Oratorio: "Break forth, O beauteous heavenly light", [Brich an, o schönes Morgenlicht], and "Beside thy cradle here I stand" [Ich steh an deiner Krippen hier]. For the first time I was acquainted with feelings and textures outside the firmly Victorian culture of King's --something that was happening at King's too, incidentally.

Years later, once my daughter left home and went on to create a home of her own, I found myself yearning for that feeling of being involved in creating the Christmas holiday. Nothing could combat the oppressive superficiality of The Holiday Season as much as being involved in making certain kinds of Christmas music. I had stopped being a believer since 5th grade, and I did not miss the religious feeling of Christmas as such. But I did miss the innocence of the central story of Christmas, which permeated the activities that I was no longer a part of.

By this time, I was well acquainted with the entire Weihnachtsoratorium of Bach. Towards the end of his life, Bach created two incredible choral edifices: the St Matthew Passion, and the Mass in B minor. The Christmas Oratorio is a more humble, human-scaled creation, more comfortable for ordinary human beings, a family-friendly miracle, possibly more musically inspired than Handel's Messiah, but equally accessible. (Don't get me wrong; Messiah is a miracle itself. Messiah is a further step towards the melody-dominated world of Mozart than is Bach's Oratorio.)

 So I listened to the Weihnachtsoratorium (=Christmas Oratorio) over and over again, and it has become a way of going once again, with the shepherds, to see the child in the manger, to paraphrase the beautiful bidding prayer of the King's College service of carols. And this year, there are for me two more upon another shore and in a greater light, as it must be for those of you who have lost loved ones.

A few years ago, I had to sit down and write a story that would keep me company through the season, but to my joy, I discovered a story that perfectly captured my feelings, and here's an excerpt. Christine is a young eleventh-grader, involved in a music festival at which the Bach oratorio is to be performed, and Maria is a German contralto soloist. Christine has been assigned to "babysit" Maria, who has turned up a little earlier than expected.

Archimedes