Where’s the spirit of joy? ‘I’m it!’

“Joyful, all ye nations rise, Join the triumph of the skies; With the angelic host proclaim, Christ is born in Bethlehem!’ ”

The Christmas carol, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” first appeared in 1739. It was essentially a collaboration between Charles Wesley and George Whitefield, two founding ministers of the Methodist Church. Wesley’s original opening couplet was “Hark! how all the Welkin (heaven) rings Glory to the King of Kings”. Whitefi eld edited that to the familiar lyric, “Hark: The Herald Angels sing, ‘Glory to the new-born King’.” I wish to share with you one more version. According to minister/ best-selling-author Robert Fulghum, it was sung by a little boy, Hong Duc, and the lyrics begin, “Hark! the hairy angels sing…” According to Robert, it happened a few days before Christmas—a pounding on his front door. Opening the door, he was confronted with a very short person wearing a paper Santa Claus mask. “Santa” thrust forward a paper sack, “Trick or treat!” At a loss for words, Robert cocked his head. “Trick or treat!” Santa said again. Thoughtlessly, Robert removed a dollar from his billfold and dropped it in the bag.

The mask lifted and Robert recognized the Asian child. His family were Vietnamese boat refugees that had settled into the neighborhood a year before. Hong Duc, maybe 8, had also come at Halloween. At that time, he was dressed as a Wise Man with a bathrobe and a dish towel around his head.

“Wanta hear some singing?” asks Hong Duc. “Sure, where’s the choir?” “I’M IT.” Then came “Jingle Bells,” at full volume. Next comes something, as mentioned above, that surely sounds like, “Hark, the hairy angels sing.” Lastly the volume drops to a soft rendering of “Silent Night,” ending sweetly with “Sleep in heavenly peace.”

Teary-eyed and struck silent, Robert fishes out a five-dollar bill and drops it into the paper bag. Flashing an enormous grin, Hong Duc runs from the porch shouting “God bless you,” and “trick or treat!”

We join Rev. Fulghum in our evolved confusion about Christmas. Neither have we ridden in a one-horse sleigh, and neither have I, myself, ever roasted chestnuts on an open fire: I’ve only burned a few weenies on a coat hanger. Santa is perhaps the most well-developed myth in all of human history. (But for what it’s worth, and this is for another story, I promise you I have seen him.) We call Christmas the season of giving, but it’s also, surely, the season of buying and going into debt. And paradoxically, though the Incarnation of God through the birth of Jesus is central to the Church’s proclamation, the Sundays just before Christmas (and this is fact) are the most sparsely attended worship services of the year.

Yet I feel sure Robert Fulghum speaks for many of us: “Singing about things I’ve never seen or done, dreaming of a white Christmas I’ve never known. Christmas isn’t very real. And yet, and yet… I’m too old to believe in it, and too young to give up on it. Too cynical to get into it, and too needy to say out of it.”

As Robert observed about St. Hong Duc, he is confused about the details of Christmas, but he’s also very clear about the spirit of the season. “Where’s the choir?” “I’M IT!”

My friends, it can also be true about us. “Where’s the spirit of joy?” “I’m it!” “Where is the spiritual devotion of the saints?” “I’m it!” “Where is a true example of God’s love for all the world?” “I’m it!” In this season, “With angelic Duc proclaim, Christ is born in Bethlehem.”