No one actually said this on Christmas Eve at Holy Moly. But there was a moment when it must have crossed someone’s mind. When I arrived at the church for a quick run-through of some of the music for that night’s service (which included an extra half-hour singing carols) there was a large altar party being walked through its route. There were about 4 times as many people as usual, what with extra torchbearers and other ecclesiastical supernumeraries, and they had a more complicated processional path to follow, in order to end up by the little creche that was set up at one side of the sanctuary.
They practiced their moves, we went over our musical stuff. The service started with a hitch, because we had a new guest organist, and I gave her the go-ahead a little early. Woops! But we pretended it was just a prelude. Then we started the half hour of carols (note to self: if we do this next year, the carols need to be the really well-known, familiar ones, not the obscure ones). About two-thirds of the way through, the son of one of my choir buddies came over in some haste and got his mom to go with him. This made for an awkward bit while she scooted out, and I switched over to singing melody.
After a while, she came back, walking in that circumspect way that people wearing “church clothes” do when having to move around during a service.
We finished with the carols, and then the choir walked back to the behind-the-scenes hallway where we would follow the altar party in to start the actual service. There was another little pause, and then some scuffling around, and then one of the kids was handed the Baby Jesus to carry in the procession. We processed in, the altar party went over to the creche, and the Christ Child was placed on his little manger (actually, it’s a carved wooden bookstand, covered with straw and greenery). The rest of the service went off in the normal way – singing, prayers, a sermon, more singing, the Eucharist, and then singing “Silent Night” by candlelight.
Later, when we were enjoying a plateful of shared nosh downstairs, I asked my buddy why her son came and got her in the middle of a choral piece, instead of waiting until the music was over.
Turns out that they’d misplaced the Baby Jebus, and no one knew where He was. But He was found in a cupboard somewhere, and so it all worked out.
