Magic in the Mountains

I was not the sort of mother who enforced mandatory Sunday school when my children were young. I drew from my own childhood experience of endless Sundays clouded by pre-church-going arguments with my mother, which I inevitably lost - although not without a fight - followed by mind numbing boredom stuffed in a pew with my quarter for the collection plate tucked inside my white gloved hand. I never thought it fair that my father was exempt, because he "worked all week in the city." I knew he was happiest outdoors, beyond religion, and so was I.


Thus, I was determined not to foist this suffering upon my own offspring. But, around Christmas time, I would begin to feel that my children ought to participate in a little something. A few weeks into December, we moms and our kiddos would gather at Fay's house in our small southern Vermont town to assign readings for the annual Christmas Eve service. Fay served hot chocolate with artfully decorated cookies and handed out candy canes; if a child was old enough to speak, he or she was assigned a part. The eldest children received the weightier speeches. 


Just after dark on Christmas Eve, we would gather at the Landgrove Church, drop off our food items for  families less fortunate, and receive our re-cycled candles. The tiny church was unlit and unheated, so we bunched together for warmth, arms entwined. Someone would be playing the old organ in the soft glow of a flashlight as we trooped in. The children sat together in a side pew in their parkas and boots, and colorful woolen hats and mittens, red-cheeked, their breath frosting the air. We sang all the familiar carols, interspersed with readings that had been rehearsed once or twice before - sometimes in the car on the way over.


When the singing paused, you could hear discussions from the side pew.


"Henry, Henry, wake up! It's your turn."


"No, Sam goes first."


"No, Christina goes."


"I don't want to!"


"Someone just go!"


My baby son fell asleep in my arms his first year. Another year, my daughter Katherine, towering at age 16 above the younger ones was assigned a plum role, several pages long. She was studying acting in high school and gave her lines special emphasis, until she came to the part about Jesus being a just man.


"And Jesus," she emoted, "being just a man..." Giggles erupted and continued throughout the service.


My favorite part came at the end, when the first child's candle was lit and he or she lit the candle of the next child and so on, until the tiny church was filled with flickering candlelight and smiling faces and whispered voices wishing each other PEACE.


It wasn't about religion, then, at all, but magic.