white christmas

Our annual Christmas production at the church is history. Between Thursday night and last night, we put on this 1 hour and 45-minute program, “White Christmas,” six times to a nearly full house for every performance.

The program itself was a montage of music, arranged and performed in different styles, together with drama and dance (five monologues, with swing dancers opening and closing the program, and ballet dancers playing a big part in adding to the beauty and symbolism).

“What feeling did you get from the program?” I asked the friend who attended last night when we went out for coffee later.

She told me about the one song that choked her up. She said it was when the soloist and the choir sang the song: "This is Our God." During the song two ballet dancers are doing choreography in front of the manger scene (live characters posed in a manger scene box at the back of the stage). A little girl (maybe 8-9) has the main dance part, doing expressive motions to these lines:

This is our God, living and breathing
Call Him courageous, relentless and brave
This is our God, loving and reaching
Scandalous mercy and mighty to save...

This is our God, suffering and dying
Call Him the Hero, redeeming the lost
This is our God, loving sacrificing
All that is holy accepting our cross..."

Hallelujah This is our God - Sing praise (repeated numerous times as the chorus)

At the very end, after she'd done her dance (bear in mind, as choir members we weren't able to watch closely what was happening on stage during the songs we sang, so her description was news to me), she took off her ballet slippers and gave them to the baby Jesus

Oh my. Isn’t that a picture of where each one of us wants our efforts to end up, whether we sing, or write, or serve, or cook – given as a gift to Jesus?

I'm actually kind of glad I didn't know that part was in there - as I'm sure if I had, I would have lost it myself!

Anyway, it was a fabulous weekend singing and getting to know other choir members during our times off stage and between performances. Now for the other stuff of Christmas - shopping and such.

Photo: CLA E-bulletin