About an hour into the concert, we could feel the anticipation. The church fell silent for just a few seconds. Conductor Tom Baker, all 14 musicians in the orchestra and the 80-voices-strong choir seemed to collect themselves for the climax of their performance. The singers rose in unison. Then, so did the audience in rapt attention.
“Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah,” the choir began to sing, somewhat muted at first. Then, their voices rising in crescendo, the mass choir filled the sanctuary with the final refrain: “And he shall reign forever and ever. King of kings. Lord of lords. Hallelujah!”
Every two years for the past 40, the Uxbridge Messiah Singers (UMS) have reassembled, rehearsed, dressed up in their finest, and performed George Frederic Handel’s most famous composition, Messiah, to the delight of Uxbridge audiences. (This year – 282 years after the work was premiered in Dublin in 1742 – the UMS dedicated their two-night run at the Baptist church to Charlotte Mills, an original choir member, who died just days ago at the age of 92.)
For me, it marked a favourite among my dozen or so days of Christmas.
On my first day of Christmas, sometimes shared with grandchildren and nearly always with my canine companion, Jazz, I go hunting for the perfect tree. And like every one before it, this year’s spruce is perfect. Oh yes, and when Jazz joins me, he takes the place of the 10 lords a-leaping – of course, he’s a springer spaniel.
On the second, third, fourth and several more days prior to Christmas, we shop. Jayne, my wife, and I snatch parts of the days before Christmas to search out or prepare gifts for the youngest members of our clan. While never as extravagant as calling birds, French hens, turtledoves or a partridge in a pair tree, we try to match presents to personalities and passions, with varying degrees of success; I suspect even the first gifts of turtledoves weren’t an automatic hit.
Not long after I begin counting the days of the holiday season, I include a stop to donate to the local food bank. Not a place of celebration or levity necessarily, but essential to any community that cares, Loaves and Fishes Food Bank gifts are my equivalent of the five golden rings – gold in the sense they deliver cans, boxes, bags, baskets and perishables of precious sustenance for our neighbours in need.
Now, none of these celebratory days – at least in my leadup to Christmas – passes without the play and fellowship of hockey. For nearly 40 years, members of my Oilies Oldtimers Hockey Club have capped a night of recreational hockey late in December by gathering for seasonal toast or two. Mind you, any talk of ladies dancing, pipers piping or drummers drumming is generally replaced by jibes about non-stellar passes, foiled A-moves and fluky saves.
As my days of Christmas move into double digits, I search out as many of the sounds and sights of the season I can find – the Farmers Christmas Market (a-bustling) and the Uxbridge Optimist Fantasy of Lights (a-flickering), for example. But when the guilty pleasures of home finally call, my final nights before Christmas bring me to my radio and TV.
There, at precisely 6:30 p.m. on Christmas Eve, I pour an eggnog or two, turn down the lights, and listen to the annual CBC Radio One broadcast of Frederick Forsyth’s The Shepherd. It’s a ghost story about an RAF fighter pilot flying home for Christmas in 1957. The radio and electrical system aboard his jet suddenly fail over the English Channel. Fog blinds his attempts to land. He curses that nobody’s there to help him.
Then, suddenly, “a mile down through the sky towards the fog,” narrates the CBC’s Al Maitland, “a black shadow crossed the whiteness. …”
Essential among my days of Christmas is George Bailey a-ranting. It’s the moment in Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life, when actor James Stewart eviscerates the Scrooge-like character, Henry F. Potter for gouging his tenants.
“Just remember this, Mr. Potter. This rabble you’re talking about, they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? My father didn’t think so. People were human beings to him. But to you, a warped frustrated old man, they’re cattle. Well, in my book, my father died a much richer man than you’ll ever be.”
So, whether you mark the holidays witnessing Handel’s Messiah or helping others, from my family at home and at the Cosmos, we wish you health and happiness.