Don’t ask me why I was looking through my files in such a way that I found this little nugget of nostalgia, but … I found my notes from a Worship & Music Commission meeting from five years ago and saw an agenda item that made me frown, giggle, and look wistfully into the sky simultaneously.
That’s not easy. It’s a wonder I didn’t perform a spontaneous backflip, given all the different directions my head was propelled.
But the question before the group was, what are some ways in which we can gently encourage people not to hold full-throated conversations during the Sunday-morning worship service’s organ prelude?
Lordy, what I wouldn’t give to have that as my biggest problem these days.
Well, at the time, it was a contentious question.
Which brings me to another form of music that is generally accompanied by audience members sometimes attempting to hold conversations through the gaps in the sound.
One writing-prompt question from this year’s Advent Blog instruction page is “Are there now traditions or activities that didn’t look like Christmas before, but do now?”
Got one.
People who know me, know that during my time as a UMass student I was faintly involved with the marching band. Every fall, once we finished our football game schedule, we only had two events to take care of: [1] the post-season banquet (wherein we dressed up, dined, and danced), and [2] Merry Maple.
That was an event on the Amherst Town Common, which included the lighting of a big ol’ tree, refreshments, and live music provided by the Minuteman Marching Band. The band would mass a few side streets away, march onto the Common, play a number of Christmas carol arrangements, and then play our halftime-show music (since we knew that music the best).
[Before you ask: yes, the town of Amherst, the Five Colleges nearby, and the Pioneer Valley generally, is known for its embrace of lots of different cultural traditions and its love of that whole separation-of-church-and-state thing. But December is full of holiday cheer! –And full of the need to create a little holiday-shopping awareness for the benefit of the local businesses. Ya know.]
In the more raw, wild days of UMass in the 1980s (when the school’s nickname was “ZooMass”), it was not unheard-of for a few band members to arrive at the massing point just a little, um, inebriated. And for me, a sheltered little ol’ freshman, that was a new and not entirely welcome thing, partly because GUYS! you’re wearing a band jacket and people will note that it’s a band member who is being a bit wobbly and giggly and DECORUM, PEOPLE!
Also, it was largely cold and dark and disorganized-seeming and did I mention cold?
But somehow, after the Merry Maple gig of my sophomore year, I began to see it as a more enjoyable kickoff to the particular version of the December holiday season that is experienced by college students. Yes, we’re studying for exams, but it’s about to be Christmas! and we should celebrate the holiday with our friends. And in doing so, we should celebrate our friends — these relatively new friends in our lives whom we are beginning to suspect will be our friends for a long time to come.
Two moments from the Merry Maple process have remained with me, have made me smile at the memory of that disorganized, dark, weird holiday event.
I’ll describe them, but not in chronological order.
One afternoon during November of my senior year, the band was rehearsing our Merry-Maple Christmas repertoire. We hacked our way through marching-band arrangements of “Sleigh Ride” and Leroy Anderson’s “Christmas Festival”, the latter of which we later abandoned. And we bludgeoned our way through the 1950s-era Christmas-carol band arrangements (the band was not yet a great sight-reading group).
Our director, George Parks, reminded us that our traditional way of performing the carols was “play a verse, sing a verse, play a verse”.
When we got to “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas”, we executed our usual way of singing a verse: “Jolly Old Saint Nicholas,… la la la la laaaa! La la la la la la laaaaa, la la la la laaaa!”
At which point, Mr. Parks looked over to the back corner of the rehearsal hall, where I was standing along with my fellow drum majors Heidi and Chris … smiled … and said to the band, “if you don’t know the words, just ask Heidi after rehearsal.” Heidi’s jaw dropped and then all three of us drum majors chuckled while at least half the band wondered what was so funny.
Heidi was … at least a tiny bit Jewish.
Preparing for Merry Maple was just that kind of a relaxed affair.
After the band’s Merry Maple musical performance, in December of my sophomore year — which included our halftime-show version of Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” — the drumline cranked up its thunderous parade cadence, and we marched away, two by two. (That was the only way we were getting off the Common — there were more people standing around than we could possibly have asked to move to create space for our regular parade block, eight across.)
As we departed the Common, I made eye contact with one of our “band aides”. She was a second-year senior named Beth who had graciously befriended me early in my freshman year, at a moment when I probably looked a little bewildered. She was about five-foot-nothing, had a nicely silly sense of humor and a raucous laugh to match. And during my sophomore marching season, she was tasked with standing in the end zone during our “1812 Overture” performances and repeatedly firing off a little cannon at the appropriate climactic moment.
As we made eye contact, Beth called out to me, “did you hear me?!” I said, “I didn’t even know you were here! What’d you do?” She said, “when you guys got to the big hit at the end of ‘1812’, I jumped up in the air and shouted BOOM!!!”
And indeed, as she said that, she jumped up in the air, limbs flailing, and indeed shouted “BOOM!!!”
Have you ever known, known, that you would remember a moment for the rest of your life … as that moment was happening?
I did, right then.
Before that moment, for me Merry Maple was a disorganized, too-relaxed, not-rule-following-enough part of my college marching band life.
From that moment on, Merry Maple looked and felt … and has since always looked and felt, to me … like Christmas.
May you find something similar, something that used to not be so festive or meaningful or Christmas … but which does become all that for you.
-Rob Hammerton
Sudbury UMC Lenten Devotions 