You are beautiful on Christmas Eve.

Sitting in the pews, bumping knees and shoulders. Bouncing gurgling babies and balancing candles.

It’s a lovely, quiet moment in the midst of holiday rush. I relish it, though it’s shot through with moments of dread revolving around the importance of the ritual and the emotional content invoked in such a setting.

I love worship. I love it as one who has grown up with it in many forms and settings. Worship brings forth in me a gratitude for the existence of a space in which we ask to be and are reminded of who we are.

I know the hall doesn’t decorate itself, nor does the music spring from mouths and instruments unpracticed. But because I neither administer nor direct them they seem miraculous to me. These are Christmas Gifts for which I give thanks and praise.

Another of the Christmas miracles is your showing up on Christmas Eve. You show up. Thank you for showing up. It’s not the same if you’re not there.

I suppose we would hold the service on principle even if no one showed. It is a celebration after all, a remembrance and a ritual.

Perhaps for some it’s simply a habit. A well worn path we tread because we expect to walk the labyrinth of memory and mystery at that time of year.

John Lennon wrote, “And so this is Christmas. And what have we done? Another year older. And a new one just begun.”

What I love most about the services on Christmas Eve is the mix of people. Old ones leaning into friends and acquaintances, young adults back to the nest for a visit, youth staying up late, parents fluffing imaginary feathers as if to keep warm broods of babes now grown who don’t really need it anymore but who allow it, welcoming, if only for a moment, the memory of family postures nearly forgotten.

There are people returning to the pews to try out the community again, and new sojourners trying out the community for the first time, having absorbed the cultural and spiritual and religious message that if strangers are going to be welcomed at any time it will probably be most true in a church on Christmas Eve.

So. Welcome! And welcome back.

It is good to be together.