My memories of holiday dinners past - way, way past - are not complete without the “saying of the piece” , a mandatory performance by individual family members, the children in particular, which always followed the meal. Of all the annual performances, none comes to mind more clearly than Aunt Agnes singing “Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries” year after year. After Grandad bought one of those newfangled reel to reel tape recorders, we got to hear it even more often than that.
ECBC’s Christmas concert is not your average Christmas concert. It is like an enthusiastic “saying of the piece” by our individual church family members. The interior walls of our church are painted a kind of neutral rose, so at night with the Christmas tree lit (it’s a little tipsy this year since one section was accidentally overlooked during assembly) and the house lights down, our little church is positively glowing.
First up was Andrew Henry’s annually composed for the occasion “Christmas Poem”. He always rises to the challenge of fitting his rhymes very neatly into a very eclectic meter. From there we were touched by Kathi Johnson’s singing of “Mary Did you Know?”
The musical performances included Leah Johnson on violin, some super jazzy piano playing by Sally Sorber complete with glissandos, trills, and fancy chords, and then Madeline Snyder thrilling the crowd with “O Holy Night”.
We swayed to “Calypso Lullaby” sung by our own ECBC choir, Lucy Jefferys on guitar with “Go Tell It On the Mountain”, favorite hymns sung by Holly Johnson, Dawn & Dustin Flay, and multiple generations of Hegarty women singing a Spanish song, an English song, and a just plain silly song.
Bruce Reid managed to pierce our hearts with his reading of a story about a baby and a skid row bum. Jesus liked to do that with his parables.
Wrapping it all up was Pastor Joseph Sum singing and playing guitar followed by our usual circle and blessing.
Belief and Belonging - We celebrated it here Saturday night.
Then we ate cookies.
—Marie Jones
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