Christmas music

One of the things I like best about the Christmas season is the music. As I'm one of the few people at church currently who play a keyboard instrument, that means I get to be involved in a lot of it. (There are people who play other instruments very, very well, but there aren't many places where say, a trombone really fits the atmosphere.) For the Christmas dinner this weekend, every group (men, women, youth, children) are doing a musical number. The Relief Society (women's organization) is singing What Child is This, accompanied the piano, as well as the violin. Musical talent is equally dispersed throughout the world, but not everyone reads music, so we got to teach people the harmony and then add the instrumentation. I'm lucky in that the violinist has been standing right next to me. It is a lovely song (esp. the version where the chorus has three different sets of lyrics, instead of repeating the first one). But that violin! I just want to crawl inside it! There was a cello playing with the choir at stake conference a couple months ago, and because I was playing organ I got to be near it, too, and I had the same reaction. That resinous wood sound--I just want to dive inside it and feel it all around me! I think there was a character in a Madeleine L'Engle book like that, who wanted to lie under the piano or organ or something, and feel the vibrations--The Young Unicorns, maybe? It's been a while since I read that one...

Then last night my girls and I (and PMB, whose life's mission is to play the organ--watch for him at a pipe organ near you in 20 years!) got out The Oxford Book of Carols, one of the best things anyone ever gave me for Christmas. Since everyone got the swine flu, it's taken a while to get our voices back, but finally we could sing! It was so nice. The best songs to me are the old traditional English ones (The First Nowell, What Child is This), and also the German ones (Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen). Oh, but the Latin ones are good, too, as are the macaronic ones (isn't that a lovely word? It means half in one language, half in another), like In Dulci Jubilo/Good Christian Men Rejoice. We tried the Czech ones for the sake of heritage, but I confess I can't read Polish or French very well. The letters don't say what I think they should say. But it was fun. I hope my kids keep liking music because I've always wanted to play the piano for my family and have them all get into singing. Not to go perform or anything, just to get into it for the sake of enjoyment. I just like to be in the middle of it, not just watching. Messiah sing-a-longs, for example = fantastic.