As an early Christmas treat, I’m sharing this Harmony story with everyone.Enjoy!
-Philip Gulley
With Christmas a scant two weeks, Barbara was stressing out, having never pastored a church during the Christmas season.
“What do I even preach about?” she asked Sam one evening.
“If I were you, I’d stick with the birth of Jesus,” he suggested.
“It’s been done to death. I wanted to put a twist on it.”
“I wouldn’t recommend that,” Sam said. “People don’t want novelty at Christmas, especially from their pastor.”
“I wish we had a choir,” Barbara said. “Fern Hampton singing The Little Drummer Boy in that shaky falsetto voice of hers does nothing for me.”
“Me neither, but if you cut her out, it’ll be the start of World War III.”
“Where did she get the idea she could sing?”
“Oh, I’m sure the first time she sung in church, people told her how wonderful it was, and I’m sure people are still telling her that,” Sam said. “People in churches are some of the biggest liars you’ll ever meet. It would never occur to us to tell someone that singing isn’t their gift.”
“Back to my problem. What would you preach about if you were the pastor?” Barbara asked.
“I’ll let you in on a little secret. At Christmas time, people don’t care. Five minutes after your sermon, they will have forgotten every word you said. They have other things on their minds. Personally, if it were me, I’d skip the sermon and just read the birth story from the Gospel of Luke.”
“Which translation?” Barbara asked.
“Again, Christmas is no time for novelty. The King James Version.” Sam chuckled. “I remember this guy I was in seminary with. He wanted to liven up his sermon, so he wrote his own translation of the birth story and instead of saying Mary was great with child, he said she was knocked up. He said that at 11:00 AM on a Sunday morning and by 11:30 he’d been fired. Ended up becoming a disc jockey, if I remember right.”
“Maybe I should just read the story. No adornment. No frills. Just read the story.”
“That’s what I’d do,” Sam said, profoundly grateful he was running a hardware store instead of pastoring. Forty Christmases as a pastor, eight more Christmases than Jesus. No wonder he was tired every December.
Fern Hampton had begun singing The Little Drummer Boy when she was Sam’s first grade teacher, fifty-nine years before. It had made no sense to him, even then. Why would any parent with a baby want some kid to beat his drum while their child slept, for God’s sake? It wasn’t even in their hymnal. Fern sang it from a dog-eared pamphlet from the 1940s, which she treasured as if it were the Dead Sea Scrolls. She kept it in her safety deposit box at the bank, picking it up the Saturday before singing, then returning it the next morning, the first in line when the bank opened on Monday morning. Sam had touched it once, as a small child, and Fern had yelled at him, in church, in front of God and everyone. She hadn’t liked him since.
She had even mentioned it thirty years later, in his annual pastoral review, in the “needs improvement” section. “Sam needs to keep his hands to himself.” Which, of course, made everyone wonder if Sam had been groping a parishioner. Some people still talked about it and looked at him sideways if he hugged anyone. He never hugged Fern Hampton, that was for sure.
As for Fern, she was giving serious thought to meeting Brother Norman, he of the Shoe Ministry to the Shoeless Choctaws, in St. Louis for the Christmas holidays. She’d spent countless hours figuring out how to do it without getting caught. The problem was the song. Who would sing The Little Drummer Boy if she were in St. Louis? People expected it. Every year they told her how much they liked it, that it wouldn’t be Christmas without her singing that song.
Sam had first heard it as his grandmother’s house, who had it on an album, sung by the Trapp Family singers. He’d hated the song then and had caught himself wishing the Von Trapp family had been arrested by the Nazis, a most uncharitable thought to have at Christmastime, but there you go.
“What do you think?” he heard Barbara ask.
“Sorry, I was thinking about something else,” Sam said. “What do I think about what?”
“I was saying that maybe Fern is tired of singing the song and maybe I should ask her whether or not she still wants to.”
“Hmm, the only problem with that is she won’t hear you asking if she still wants to sing it. What she’ll hear is you asking her not to sing it. Then you’re going to have a fight on your hands.”
So no one said anything. Fern called Brother Norman and told him she couldn’t meet him in St. Louis after all, that no one else could else sing the song quite the way she could, and people would be so disappointed if she weren’t there to sing it.
“I could come up there,” he offered.
“Too risky,” she said.
“Not if we were married,” he said.
Well, that was something to think about. Married at their age. How scandalous! Even more outrageous than being caught in a hotel room in St. Louis. Quakers didn’t have nuns, but if they did Fern Hampton would have been one of them. A woman who practiced celibacy so others wouldn’t have to, snared by a man with animal urges. What would others think of her? But she was flattered, she had to admit.
Truth be told, she was starting to hate the song herself. It had never been her idea to sing it in the first place. Pastor Taylor, may he rest in peace, had first asked her, back in the 1960s, and she’d agreed to it, not knowing at the time it would be a lifetime commitment, not unlike marriage. Until death do you part. She liked the song at first. It reminded her of her mother, who’d bought the sheet music for it at Kivett’s Five and Dime, which she stored in the piano bench. When she died, Fern had come across it. In an odd sort of way, it had become her mother, or at least all her mother had represented. Too precious to store at home, where it could go up in flames, hence the safety deposit box. Now she was wishing it, and every copy of the song ever printed, could burn to a crisp.
Fern pulled Barbara aside the next Sunday at church.
“I won’t be singing The Little Drummer Boy this year,” she said. “It’s been sixty years. That’s enough. Time for someone else to sing something.”
While Barbara hadn’t mastered every aspect of pastoral ministry, she excelled at feigned sincerity.
“Oh, Fern, people will be so disappointed. It won’t feel like Christmas without you singing your song.”
“Well, they’ll just have to get over it,” Fern snapped. “It’s not my job to make sure everyone has a good Christmas.”
Fern phoned Brother Norman when she got home. “I won’t marry you, but I can meet you in St. Louis for Christmas, if you’re still interested.”
It turned out he was.
Walking home from church, Barbara told Sam her problem was solved. Fern no longer wanted to sing The Little Drummer Boy.
“I wonder who we can ask to do special music?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t ask anyone,” Sam advised. “Take your time. Wait for something to emerge. Otherwise we might end up with another bad song for sixty years.”
That was the trick of pastoral ministry. Patience. Not rushing to fill the void. Not standing up front on a Sunday morning and saying, “We need a volunteer to serve as an elder. Would anyone like to do that?”
Too many people were poor judges of their proficiency. People who mistook the question for a calling from the Lord. Every congregation had a half dozen folks like that. People who hadn’t played the piano in fifty years, but thought they could play it for church, should the need arise. People who’d taken an accounting class in high school, who only knew they were overdrawn if the bank phoned to tell them, but believed they’d be an outstanding church treasurer, because how hard could it be, after all.
“Take your time,” Sam repeated. “The world won’t end if we go without special music one Christmas. Just have us sing an extra hymn.”
“I tell you one thing,” Barbara said. “I’m taking the Sunday after Christmas off. Christmas isn’t even here yet and I’m exhausted. Let’s go somewhere. Just the two of us.”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” Sam said. “I can get Uly to run the store and we can take a trip.”
“Where would you like to go?” Barbara asked, growing excited.
“I have never seen the Gateway Arch in St. Louis,” Sam said. “It’s a four-hour drive and I’ve never been there.”
“Neither have I. Let’s go there.”
A week in St. Louis. There was no telling what they would see.
Philip Gulley is the author ofthe popularHarmony seriesandUnlearning God: How Unbelieving Helped Me Believe.
Discover my books, stories, and more by visiting Books by Philip Gulley
Contact Philip directly at philiphgulley@gmail.com
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