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On Christmas Eve, it’s the churches’ chance to shine

Tim Umphreys

It’s Christmas Eve, so seems like a good time to talk about church.

What is it that pulls so many of us to a Christmas Eve service, even if we are nonbelievers or haven’t stepped foot in a church since our cousin’s wedding in 2019? Is it the light in the windows at winter’s darkest hour? The sweet familiar carols? The nostalgic hangover of too many Hallmark movies? The wish for even a small miracle to counteract the harshness of the long season ahead?

Christmas Eve services were once Standing Room Only, filled not only with regulars but what parishioners call “C and Es” – those who show up only on Christmas and Easter. Get there early – particularly for the late-afternoon family service – or risk standing for an hour while holding a squirming 2-year-old desperately trying to shed their holiday finery.

Even on non-holidays, houses of worship were an integral part of the Cape’s daily life. Come summer, you could eat at a church dinner – lobster, chowder, fish, bbq – seven days a week. In the off-season, women’s guilds and men’s groups gathered for lunch or craft-making sessions and raised thousands for charity. Youth groups pitched in on community service projects. There was a bingo night in virtually every parish. Volunteers from the synagogue helped at the hospital on Christmas Day. Interdenominational groups formed community outreach organizations like the Cape Cod Council of Churches and the Harwich Ecumenical Council.

Of course, culture changes. People’s lives are no longer attuned to setting aside Sunday mornings. Houses of worship are still an important part of the Cape’s social service infrastructure but many worry over declining attendance, and several former houses of worship have been turned into secular venues or even private homes.

But on Christmas Eve, it’s the churches’ chance to literally shine. Most villages and towns have at least one church or meetinghouse – often several – that light the candles, put out the greens and welcome people to Christmas Eve services – and it can still be hard to find a seat.

I’ll be there partly because I’m a handbell ringer, meaning I’ll be ready to ring a deep G or B-flat at, here’s hoping, just the right moment, keeping in tune with eight or so others on “Angels We Have Heard on High.” But my favorite moment of the service is at the end. The lights are dimmed and we light candles, passing the flame like hope from one person to another. We sing “Silent Night” in harmony with all the voices that have gone before us. It’s a moment of peace when there are no political divisions or church disputes or family feuds. For three or four minutes, heartbreak, anger and even impatient children are held at bay.

Ironically one of my favorite Christmas Eves was during the pandemic. We couldn’t actually be inside the church building because of COVID-19 restrictions, and it was a chilly and windy night. Parishioners had lined the church driveway with dozens of luminarias – lit candles in paper bags weighted with sand. And a work crew was busy relighting them every time one blew out, while making sure the wind didn’t blow the flames into the 18th-century wooden building. The music director played a keyboard inside the church with a speaker pointing out an open window. One of the evergreen trees was covered in lights. The pastor shivered at an outside lectern, and the congregation gathered on the lawn, pulling down our hats or ducking into our collars against the wind.

But after a short service, the music director played the opening bars of “Silent Night” on the electric organ. We sang the familiar words and raised battery-powered candles above our heads, sending a message of hope into the air to dispel the gloom and fear and loss of pandemic isolation. I’m sure if you had taken a poll, we all had different beliefs about God or the Bible or salient details of the Christmas story, but at that moment, we all prayed for the same result: May the power of community, the miracle of light, and the joy of birth brighten the darkness of the times.

I wish for you all that and more this Christmas Eve. Here’s to peace, love and good will toward all humankind.

Susan Moeller is a freelance writer and editor who was a reporter and editor with the Boston Herald and Cape Cod Times. She’s lived on the Cape for 45 years and when not working, swims, plays handbells, pretends to garden, and walks her dog, Dug. She lives in Cummaquid.