Reflections on Christmas Sunday and Christmas Carol Season: A Loss of Innocence
From an early age I have been obsessed with the Biblical narrative of the Fall from grace, with its vivid imagery of innocence lost in Eden.
From the time that I turned 12 or so, the story has resonated deeply as a symbol for the passage from childhood into adulthood. As children, we inhabit a world where goodness is presumed, trust comes easily, and the cruelties and complexities of human nature are veiled from our awareness, or at least they were from me. Yet, as we grow and our understanding deepens, we inevitably encounter the darker facets of humanity, including malice, duplicity, and the stark reality that even the gentlest souls are capable of doing great harm. This awakening mirrors the fateful bite from the fruit of knowledge: it is a painful initiation into the awareness that our world is flawed and that we, too, are fallible. The realization of our own mortality, the knowledge that life is finite and oblivion awaits us all, further strips away the shroud of innocence, compelling us to confront the profound burdens of existence. In this light, the Fall is on one level a universal metaphor for the bittersweet awakening to the fullness of the human condition, a journey from sheltered naïveté toward the fragile wisdom born of experience, suffering, and the acceptance of our common fate.
My fall from grace, my expulsion from Eden, occurred in 1964, when our family moved to London, Ontario from the small town of Georgetown, near Toronto.
Paradise for me, was singing in the United Church junior choir, and never more so than at Christmas.
I have always wept at Christmas, yes, and sometimes tears of joy.
When we were children in Georgetown, our parents dragged us to church, St. John’s United to be exact. Later in life, I learned that our folks weren’t really believers and that they joined the congregation for purposes of community and probably as a bit of bet hedging, i.e. a dose of worship and piety just in case there was a Hairy Thunderer with a detailed ledger to whom accounts would eventually have to be rendered. In any case, early in life it was discovered that I actually had a sweet singing voice, which only abandoned me with the onset of pubescence. The choirmaster, Mr. Harrison, would always bludgeon me into singing in competitions, aided and abetted by my vicariously ambitious mom, performances that I would inevitably flub due to acute attacks of nerves that resulted, like clockwork, in rasping laryngitis and agonizing diarrhea.
But back in 1961 or 1962, I was chosen to sing a solo over the church loudspeakers that broadcast carols throughout the town on Christmas Eve. I was designated one of the “three kings of the Orient” and although required to croon gloomily about deathly odiferous myrrh, being selected as a king was something of a triumph:
Myrrh is mine; its bitter perfume
breathes a life of gathering gloom;
sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying,
sealed in the stone-cold tomb.
But lugubriousness aside, and best of all, I got to perform in the company of older kids who, unlike myself, were really poised and talented, especially the duo of David Farnell and Barbara Evans, whom I had elevated to the status of icons. Every year, over the hallowed loudspeakers, they would sing “Oh Holy Night,” a venerable Georgetown tradition. For me, their duet was of a sublime beauty that ephemerally washed away all the horrors of Christmas present and Christmas past.
O Holy Night!
The stars are brightly shining
It is the night of the dear Savior’s birth!
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till he appear’d and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary soul rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!
Fall on your knees
Oh hear the angel voices
Oh night divine
Oh night when Christ was born…
Hearing them sing, even as an unbeliever, I would weep: for the angelic beauty of their voices; for the exquisite euphony of the lyrics that I could barely understand; and for the losses and agony of everyday existence, fleetingly effaced.
And I weep still. I weep still.
Your friend,
Robert
https://robertmcbrydeauthor.com/
P.S. Part of this little vignette was posted last year and can also be found in my little book titled My Time with You Has Been Short but Very Funny. It is included here in honour of my wife Anne, a victim of Grade 4 brain cancer who is experiencing a Christmas season like none other. The theme of loss is particularly relevant in this regard.
