I never feel the spirit of the festive season until Christmas Eve. I can’t help it. It is the way I was brought up. I was brought up with the ‘Jimin Mhaire Thaidgh’ model of Christmas preparation: you stayed out in the yard until you were called. (It was our Irish schoolbook – Jimin’s parents only got into Dingle to do the shopping on Christmas Eve. Christmas arrived with a sudden and intense bang.) So that even nowadays - despite the tinsel, the wrappings, the parties and punch for weeks beforehand - Christmas still arrives for me suddenly sometime on Christmas Eve. And with the same surge of the spirits.
It hits at an unannounced moment during the course of that day, signaled usually by some less than noteworthy event – the closing down of Venetian blinds on dentist surgeries; the lessening of traffic as roads begin to show some daylight though dusk be not far off; the sudden deliriously funny behavior of bin collectors at front doors; fathers’ changes of mood as they escort nervously expectant offspring to work canteens and require them to sit up sagely like themselves to –ugh - bagels and Philadelphia cheese…That’s when Christmas hits the core of happiness in my heart. That’s when the wrapping bursts open.
There is but one exception to that rule. There is one night when the spirit of Christmas makes an advance assault. It happens unfailingly. It happens at the Monkstown Parish Church on the Sunday before Christmas: At ‘The Service of Nine Lessons and Carols’. This year it happened again.
Each year it happens the same: There is the same distracted atmosphere as the congregation fills into the church - a sort of end of year babble. This year I am seated in the gallery. That sound, as of expectation, swells up from the aisles below. Then the lights go down, each member of the congregation holds a lighted candle – children let theirs wobble as they see what only children can see through the flames. Then all goes finally quiet. And the lone voice is heard. “Once In Royal David’s City…” Like a shaft of light in the dark. And the hairs stand in the back of my neck. We are all stilled by the beautiful soprano of young Rosalie Lockhart…
After that lone voice come the carols and lessons. The well rehearsed choir is at times restrained at times joyous. There are other solos: Caer Smyth and Ronnie Elder give us the “Bleak Midwinter”, with intense feeling. The smash hit of the night is Cathleen Murphy’s rendering of “O Holy Night”. Then, just as we are all lulled, comes the blast of brass from the ‘Steadfast Band’ with “Hark! The herald-angels”. It issues in with great shiny notes, a trumpeting of gifts, Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh. Then the lights come on and we all look around smiling to one another and a miracle has happened… It has happened here as it will happen in a stable (to quote John Betjeman):
That God was Man in Palestine
And lives today in bread and wine.
This year, I am told, the Monkstown Parish Choir Service was on the web. The event is becoming more widely known. And yes, if such be possible, it gets better each year. The polish of professionalism becomes more evident, the hand of superb organist and orchestrator, Siobhan Kilkenny. We appreciate her dedication and that of Simon Stroghair and the magnificent choir. Be warned. Come in time next year. Though I’m not sure I should be telling you this. I don’t want to lose my vantage point in the gallery at the best Christmas gig in town.
Leo Cullen