When Christmas music comes alive

Several years back, I spent most of December in India working with a university there. It was the 22nd day of the month, three days before Christmas, when I was finally on a plane moving down the taxiway headed for home.

Just at the edge of my consciousness I became aware that the wonderful Christmas carol "Hark, the Herald Angles Sing" was playing on the intercom. It had been a year since I had heard Christmas music, and I had not been thinking about Christmas at all since the normal decorations of the season are not generally found in most parts of India. Suddenly, the feeling of heading for home, of family and Christmas, were very much on my mind, and I closed my eyes to listen to a song about angels and a newborn king. There was an emotion that swept over me that is impossible to describe.

India is a country of major contrasts. It has 1.1 billion people, and about 80 percent of them practice the Hindu religion. There are Christians in India, but they make up only about 3 percent of the total population. St. Thomas, one of Jesus' apostles, came to India to do missionary work in about 40 AD. There are churches named for St. Thomas in several locations around the southern tip of the country, and his tomb can be found in Chennai (The British called that city Madras.) John Cary, of early Christian Missionary fame, did most of his work in the Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) region. Many years later Mother Teresa was there as well.

A music teacher once told me that music is the window to the soul. That is certainly true with the music we hear at Christmas. When you hear the titles of Christmas songs what goes through your mind? Try these: "Mary, Did You Know?" "Away in a Manger." "We Three Kings." Whether it is the words or the tune, often when we hear a familiar Christmas song, thoughts flash through our mind about good times or significant others in our lives. It can trigger a memory or sooth a heartache.

Christmas music speaks to us of home and family and memories that go back as far as our mind can take us. It gives us visions of grandparents and parents, and brothers and sisters, some of them long gone but with memories of them as clear as crystal, and it generates real emotions inside us when we think of the many Christmases past. May it always be so. "Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus," and I can add without fear of contradiction that he and that babe from Bethlehem come alive in our hearts this time of the year every time we hear a Christmas carol.