A young man came to my house to pick me up for Midnight Mass. It was cold that night. They were predicting a white Christmas for our area with snow hitting some time over night.
We went to Mass at my church. Back in those days if you didn't get there early, you didn't get a seat. So we go to church before 10:45 and I got to listen to our choir sing the usual pre-Mass program of Christmas carols.
Church was decorated the same as it had been for the previous 10 or so years that I had gone there. I was split between two churches growing up; in the end, my parents returned to the church we had left and I stayed at the new one. It just felt like home to me.
It was a beautiful Mass. I cried just like I do every year. When they sing Silent Night to start Mass I cry. They sing at Communion, I cry. (They sing "Oh Come Little Children" in German; years ago my dad helped them with the proper pronunciations in that one. So there is reason to cry. . .solid memories there)
After Communion they sing "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." Funny. Just typing the title makes me cry. Goodness gracious.
But the absolute tearfest is at the end of Mass when the choir sings the recessional. . ."Twas the Birthday of a King." I have searched high and low to find a version of it on youtube that comes anywhere near to my church's choir. We don't have a big choir. Just a church with incredible acoustics. And when they sing it, it really rings out. And I cry.
When we left Mass that night, all aglow in the peace and quiet that comes with being out in the middle of the night, we looked up and saw snow. There probably wasn't a half inch of slushy snow on the ground yet when he took me home. But watching it fall from the sky, in that cold dark and intensely quiet night, it was magical. A perfectly magical first Christmas with the young man I would later marry.
A magical Christmas, just as it should be every year.
Merry Christmas everyone!
