An unexpected feast of light and music one Christmas Eve

by Nancy Thomas

One year I found myself driving around downtown Providence early on Christmas Eve. I’m not really clear on how I came to be doing this.  My children were at their dad’s family’s and I guess I had not planned correctly and ended up alone on Christmas Eve.

The drive was to “look at the lights” in Cranston homes. I then drove by Cranston City Hall with all its pre-LED splendor of white lights on giant green Christmas trees. Somehow I made my way onto Route 10 and then thought it might be nice to see the lights in downtown Providence.

Did it enter my mind that this all seemed a little sad?  Yes, it did. But, as an only child, time alone was nothing foreign to me, and something that always restored my energy, rather than deplete it.

It was fairly early on Christmas Eve. The lights downtown were nothing very special. I thought back to the low hanging, swooping wreaths and simple set of white lights that would be streamed over roads downtown, from my childhood days, and what a sense of wonder they always left me with as my father would drive under them. “Seeing the lights” was a thing in my childhood at Christmas time, and we would go down arbitrary roads just to see something a little new or different.

Soon I found myself taking a turn onto Westminster Street. The lights now were different, swooping like a wave from one end to the other, reminding me of a blanket or a wave of lights, like the ones you would see at a carnival.

Soon I pulled over next to an office where I used to work. The lights were on. Nothing out of the ordinary to think someone was still at work, giving up so much of their life (and earning and saving capacity) working late on Christmas Eve. Saving lives. Losing part of theirs, I thought. Not a charitable thought. Time with their own family. Time caring for themselves. But it won’t be for years before they know that. Those dedicated missionaries, missing the wonder of their own lives, in the hope of bringing it to others, and maybe finding just a light or two of their own. Fluorescent, on this night.

I noticed the beautiful church across the street. The one with the red door. The one with ringing bells at noon, practicing their Christmas songs for days before their big show – Christmas services. Grace Church.

Years later Grace Church would open its red doors and ring its solitary, lonely bell for an hour. It was almost noon. That fateful September 11^th. Business men and women came through the doors that day. Students. The homeless. All ages. Some stayed for a long time; others only for a short reprieve from the challenge to faith that had fallen from the sky on that day.

The door was open on this Christmas night, and I could see candlelight. I parked the car and walked across the street. The music was light and deep all at the same time. It echoed in this massive church with so much old wood, marble and crevices. Like a homily. People slipped in wearing dark coats, mostly alone, no particular age that I could observe. I entered, too.

The boys’ choir were in short rows, dressed in red robes, with starched accordion-like collars around their necks. Just below each choir member was an electric candle – so their faces glowed from beneath, like a magical Christmas card.

The priest was engaged in his functions, but I could not take my eyes off the choir. The sound resonating in this sanctuary. And it resonated right into me. It was, and is, hard to describe.

I didn’t want to stay to the end. To have it be ended and there be silence in the church wasn’t a pleasant thought. I chose to leave first. To quietly edge my way out of the pew and tip toe up the aisle, down the stairs, and back across the street into my car. The music slowly fading away. But still with me.

I drove home silently. Directly. No radio. No more stopping for Christmas lights. I was full. As full on Christmas Eve as I ever remembered.

What I had gone looking for was something pretty and light. But I had been searching for more than that. For a deeper light. A rest to my unease. A resonating of my own Christmas spirit. I slipped into bed, quietly, that night, content and at peace. I didn’t wait for miracles, because they were now nestled in their beds. The doors were locked. The glow of the Christmas tree that would stay lit all night. And Christmas morning was only a few hours away.

Grace Church will have two identical services today. The first is at 5pm and the second is at 10pm. The Feast of the Nativity will offer music by Harold  Darke, John Rutter, and others. Prelude music begins 30 minutes prior to each service. On Christmas Day there will be a sung Eucharist service at 10am.

Grace Episcopal Church is located at 300 Westminster Street in downtown Providence.