December 24, 2017
Christmas Eve
Tonight we gather here once again for our Seekers Christmas Eve potluck dinner and ceremony of lessons and carols,a tradition of Seekers Church for many years — long enough that our daughters, the Ogle boys, the seat girls, and the Dongo kids have all read various parts of the lessons when they were in our Sunday School. And now almost all of them are adults!
When I was growing up our church had a Christmas tree up front near the pulpit and all of its decorations were Christian symbols. Part of our church tradition was to explain those symbols to the children and youth each year. On Christmas Eve our family tradition was to go to the church’s candlelight service. My older sister and I sang in the choir and it was a big deal for all of the children when we were big enough to be given our own candle to hold. Another Christmas tradition in my family was for my parents to play Christmas music for my sisters and I to learn to sing along. These were on 78 rpm records (Kids, you’ll have to ask us really old folks what a 78 rpm record was!) [(The RCA Victor 78 rpm I memorized as a child can be downloaded at https://childrensvinyl.wordpress.com/2015/06/24/why-the-chimes-rang/.]
Like every other kid at Christmas, I was focused on receiving gifts. So there was another record my mother played for us, a story that I listened to over and over and over until by the time I was in about third grade I had committed to memory, and my mother had me recite it to several women’s groups. It’s been 60 years since I first learned it and I can’t recite it from memory anymore. But I still love this story and it’s about giving. It’s entitled, “Why the Chimes Rang.”
Here is the link to “Why the Chimes Rang” http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=alden&book=chimes&story=rang
