It's Christmas Eve, and if you listen carefully, you will hear America singing. Actually, you don't need to listen all that carefully - just head for the nearest church.
If you are among the nearly one in four Americans who worship in the Roman Catholic Church, you will probably do that at midnight tonight. Midnight Mass on Christmas Day ranks with Easter Mass as one of the must-attend services on the Catholic calendar, which means the sound of music will fill more than 18,200 Catholic churches late tonight. Many Catholic parishes also hold earlier masses on Christmas Eve for those lacking the stamina to stay up until midnight, which means that choirs in those churches will sing two shifts from Christmas Eve into Christmas Day.
The roughly 7,000 Episcopal churches in the United States are similarly busy on Christmas Eve. As part of the worldwide Anglican Communion, the Episcopal Church does not recognize the primacy of the Pope, but many Episcopal church services follow practices and rituals that Catholics would find familiar and comforting. In place of Midnight Mass, however, most Episcopal parishes opt for a late-night Holy Eucharist on Christmas Eve, liberally augmented with song.
The sound of music also rings out on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day nation’s other Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox Christian denominations. Gospel choirs – a distinctive feature of many Evangelical and African-American Protestant churches – often appear not only at services but on television programs celebrating the Christmas season.
And, of course, there is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, the leading musical voice of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Salt Lake City-based chorale’s Christmas music is a staple of the season in both Mormon and non-Mormon households across America.
Although the percentage of Americans who identify as Christians has fallen recently, to slightly less than 70 percent, that percentage still represents a huge number – more than 150 million Americans – in what remains the most religious society in the Western world. And as most Christian denominations take seriously the admonition to “make a joyful noise unto the Lord” at Christmastime, that means that the sound of music, performed by choirs both amateur and professional, will fill the air just about everywhere today and tomorrow.
(The author of this article will be doing his part to contribute to the joyful noise as a member of the choir at the Nevil Memorial Church of St. George (Episcopal) in Ardmore, Pa.)
Written by Sandy Smith
For HULIQ.com
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