On the Sixteenth Day of Christmas: 16 Ups and Downs

Mercersburg Academy offers a beautiful candlelight Lessons and Carols service each year in December; Paul and I try to make the hour and a half drive each year to attend. The academy chapel is a small cathedral that could have been lifted or copied from Notre Dame in Paris. Poinsettias, pine branches and wreaths and hundreds of candles offer Christmas accent and fragrance to the rose and stained glass windows. The music is varied; this year we sang and listened to orchestra and choral pieces by Handel, Joseph M. Martin, Eric Whitacre and Benjamin Britten, to name a few.

For the congregational singing, we had the written instructions in our program about when to stand--and the instructions were pretty clear; "it is customary in the Chapel to stand for the anthem as the last line is being played."The hymns on which we were to stand were marked in the program by an asterisk. When the introduction to Hark! the Herald Angels Sing began, a few people stood; the problem was that there was no asterisk marking it to be a standing hymn. What's more, they stood before the last line was being played. Immediately some of the people around us looked at their program, looked at each other and soon peer pressure took over. A few more people stood and before long the whole congregation was standing.

I imagined the thoughts going on in each head as decisions were made:
"Hey! There's no asterisk here!"
"Will I get in trouble if I stand? If I sit? If everyone is standing, do I have to?"
"Is it customary to follow directions and remain seated even if everyone is standing?"

No one likes to be the only one standing, no matter how correct.

Years ago Paul and I attended a middle school choral concert in which one of our children was singing. Included in the program was Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. When the chorus began, Paul and I stood and soon noticed that no one else was making any attempt to stand. When it became clear that we would be standing alone for the duration, we had a momentary crisis: do we dishonor the King of England and sit or do we honor tradition and embarrass ourselves, blocking the view of the people behind us, knowing there would never be an opportunity to explain to the good folks that "it is customary during the singing of the Hallelujah Chorus for everyone to stand until the last Hallelujah is sung."

We remained standing and later learned that, as a result of doing what is customary, we totally blocked the camera set up to film the event.