SING, ALL YE CITIZENS

For many of my boyhood years, I sang in the church choir.

I sang mostly because I liked to sing. I found the humorless practicing to be a chore, and I thought a lot of the songs were colorless and boring.

I did like sitting in the choir loft, though. It was a great location from which to pursue boyish daydreams of rescuing the congregation from some interloping force or another.

“And just then,” it would go in the retelling, “Just then he swooped down out of the loft, his red choir robe partially unzipped, and landed a staggering blow on the heads of the church robbers/marauding alien forces/zombie hordes. What bravery! And, you know, he’s also quite the alto.”

The one exception was Christmas Eve. I did not daydream on Christmas Eve.

Being up in the loft at night lent the whole experience a tinge of mystery that trumped daydreaming.

Plus we got to sing a whole range of cool songs: Silent Night, O Come, All Ye Faithful, Angels We Have Heard On High, Joy to the World, O Little Town of Bethlehem, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.

Man, Christmas hymns are the new punk rock...