From the Pastor’s Desk - Christmas 2019

 

When I arrived at SRC eleven years ago the church had not yet fully entered the internet age and still did a lot of mailings. We had a print newsletter that was more or less monthly, and on holidays I would send out a pastoral letter. We do most stuff online now, but this is going to be kind of a letter. The first Christmas Letter I wrote in 2010 featured a reminiscence about my childhood Christmases - which did not include church because we weren’t a churched family. But we did keep Christmas well and it was pretty great. My mother - who some of you may still remember since she came to worship just about every week until she passed away in 2014 on an Easter Sunday - was a Christmas maven. That is to say, she loved Christmas and always made it special, in spite of the fact that she was Jewish. The shopping for gifts went on all year round. Many were the times when my brother and I tried to find her hiding places - we never did. We tended to get our tree on Christmas Eve, or maybe the day before Christmas Eve. Many years my father would get home from work and announce that the time had come. We were going down to the docks to get our tree. He firmly believed that the trees on display in our own neighborhood were overpriced and scrawny. He wanted to go where they got unloaded, and sure enough when we got downtown - there was a real waterfront in those days, with goods being unloaded continuously - there would be Christmas Trees lining every side street. I’m not sure we have anything like it anymore. It was always cold by then and often as not there’d be snow and slush to wade through. It always took awhile for our father to make a selection and haggle the price down from the first asking price. Then we’d tie it onto the roof of whatever old car we had at the time, and take it home. My brother and I didn’t have much to do with decorating the tree. That was all done after we’d finally gone to sleep. God knows we tried to stay awake. It just never worked! We always woke up early on Christmas - well before our parents - and tip toe in to see what things looked like - and there would be our tree, like a magic trick - fully decked out and laden with gifts. We were allowed to open the stuff in our stockings early and they were always filled with goodies.

 

New York was different then. The basic layout was the same but everything was much more personal. There were small stores lining every avenue - no big chains, no mega drugstores. Restaurants you could afford to eat in. Mostly the neighborhood communities were a lot stronger and more clearly defined. I explain to folks from out of town that my childhood was a lot like growing up in a village or small town. My brother and I went to the local public school which was two blocks from our apartment. A lot of the kids went home for lunch. I was walking to school in first grade! Everyone on my route knew me and knew my mother, who had grown up in the same neighborhood.

 

Like, in the winter time guys sold roasted chestnuts on the street. They would make a charcoal fire in a bucket and roast the nuts on top. Put the whole thing in a grocery wagon. You’d get a handful for a nickel and they were hot and sweet. You’d have to blow on them. They’d cut a slice into the shell so they wouldn’t explode in the heat, and so you could peel them easier. Some guys sold candy apples. They’d have fresh apples which would get a little stick shoved in and then the whole thing dipped into hot liquid candy that hardened in the air. Five cents. Every street seller had a specialty. One thing we didn’t have were the food trucks. That’s been kind of an interesting development. The restaurants are so expensive, it’s no wonder people go to the trucks.

 

On Christmas morning, my grandmother would get to our apartment around nine or ten and that was when we could really get busy opening stuff. Some new clothes were mandatory. A flannel shirt and corduroys. But really it was about the toys. In the evening we’d put on our new things and trek up to Harlem to visit our West Indian relatives. Usually that meant going to our grandmother’s apartment. She was Jamaican and incredibly elegant and cosmopolitan. There’d be dozens of people there, laughing and talking. Eating West Indian specialties. Just great.

 

Today, Christmas for me is mostly about church and celebrating The Nativity. Apart from Lent and Easter, this is the busiest time of the year! We light the Advent Candles on Sunday before Worship begins, which for me reaffirms our purpose. It’s all about Jesus. On Christmas Eve we hold our main Christmas Worship. We do it all by candlelight and the Sanctuary - decorated by members of the congregation - becomes otherworldly, the shadows flickering against the ceiling and the walls. As we sing the songs, share fellowship, listen to God’s Word and pray together, the mood inevitably becomes thoughtful and quiet - with each of us remembering Christmases past and imagining those yet to come. It is achingly beautiful. As we walk outside, into the chilly night, we feel ourselves renewed and restored, knowing that the future is in God’s Hands. And in every way they are the same feelings I remember from my childhood as we prepared for and celebrated Christmas. Life really is miraculous.

 

Christmas at my home is different too. Partly because of church activities, but also because our daughter is all grown up now, and has a home and a husband of her own. They visit with us on Christmas Day, so my wife and I put up a tree, and what gifts we have go under it. Maybe one year soon there’ll be a grandchild for us to spoil! There aren’t the glittering piles of yesteryear, but it really is the feelings that matter. Christmas giving touches something profound in all of us.

 

As we approach Christmas this year we must not turn away from the peril we are in. It seems that we have arrived at a moment of destiny. And though we cannot know the outcome we are comforted to remember that on a night in the distant past, in a small village in a small country, a child was born - a child of the poor - and those who saw him believed that he had been sent by God to redeem us. And that is also what we believe.

 

 

Have a blessed - and a merry - Christmas! - Pastor