While decorating for Halloween I’m thinking about Christmas. Why? Because one of the best things about Christmas is the singing of old favourite songs and some new songs.
I belong to the St. John Vianney Choir and the best thing about that is sharing our voices in song not only for our parish but for our extended Westsyde community, especially those at the Hamlets residence.
We start practicing the songs we are going to sing in October. There are generally 12 singing members and three instrumentalists; giving us two altos, two descants, one bass and the rest of us hold the melody. We are accompanied by piano, guitar and flute.
Every year the choir ‘tunes’ up for the hour we will sing for the residents by meeting once a week to prepare the songs. The ones we know are tweaked since it has been a year since we sang the songs used at Christmas time. That means of course getting the counting, the intonation, the louder dramatic parts, the quite gentle parts and the inflections polished up.
Then, we sing. Song sheets are handed out, residents gather, the choir takes its place and the instruments begin.
The magic happens. The residents sing along, clap their hands. Their eyes are alight and smiles spread across their faces. One year we even had a gentleman in a wheelchair direct us from his place. He obviously knew something about music and kept time with us.
We sing old favourites: “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”, “Joy to the World”, and “Silent Night”. We always have fun with “Christmas Chopsticks” (Fred Heider). However, we also sing some newer songs such as: “A Child is Born in Bethlehem” (Kevin Keil), “Children, Run Joyfully” (Robert J. Dufford, SJ), and “Were you There on That Christmas Night?” (Natalie Sleeth).
The residents keep time, join us in song and their shinning eyes and huge smiles lets us know how much they appreciate our being there. Their joy is our Christmas gift.
For me, every Halloween brings the promise of the shared Christmas happiness when the choir sings at the Hamlets.
Submitted by June Corcoran