Variations on ‘The Night Before Christmas’

“Twas the night before Christmas” has a familiar sound to it, for those of us with, well, a variety of Christmas Eves.
No two Christmas Eves are the same, and yours this year may be different than you want it to be.
Have you made time yet to quietly permit memories to begin poking up from their cozy corners? Maybe some memories, or the way this Christmas Eve is shaping up, make you uncomfortable.
Few Christmas Eves go exactly according to our human plans.
One “nothing seemed to go right” for my parents might have been the first time I brought Paul to our house. Since my sister and I lived 700 miles from home, it was time to show my parents I still had sound judgment.
On the farm, the furnace had quit, grandkids had found all the toys, and someone wanted to confirm there was a stuffed pelican in the attic. Mom wasn’t really seeing us as we three walked past her kitchen window; she was “seeing” all that was not perfect for meeting her future son-in-law.
The imperfect Christmas Eve didn’t scare him off 39 years ago.
Among other imperfect Christmas Eves, at least from a human perspective, would be one in 1818. 
People would be coming for their traditional snowy Christmas Eve service in their picturesque Austrian Alps, but Father Mohr knew tradition was not happening that night.
The organ wasn’t working.
How many churches have Christmas Eve “hiccups” hit their plans? Today, it’s often an illness or technological mishap, but few Christmas Eves go exactly as the bulletin predicts.
In 1818, Mohr knew his service would be noticeably altered, even silent, without the traditional organ music. If he added a poem, perhaps Franz Gruber, the organist, could make it sing-able by using a guitar.  
The people not only survived the break with tradition, they liked the poem and music.
Later, when the repairman heard what they had substituted, he helped “carry the tune” to others, including the musical Strasser family. Eventually the Strasser children were asked to sing “Silent Night, Holy Night” for Austria’s king and queen.
Can we count the Christmas Eves when we’ve been touched by the song written because a Christmas Eve didn’t go according to plan?
On the first Christmas Eve, Joseph surely felt things weren’t going right, at least from his perspective.  
As God’s chosen guardian of the Christ Child miraculously placed within Mary’s womb, but awkwardly unfamiliar with his new role as provider and protector of his instant family, Joseph had little choice but to obey the census decree requiring their 60-mile trip to their ancestral hometown of Bethlehem in Mary’s final days of pregnancy.
The rest of Bethlehem did not know it was Christmas Eve, of course.
If Caesar Augustus had given a bit more lead-time, perhaps enterprising townspeople could have capitalized on the influx of people. Instead, Joseph negotiated for privacy, finding lodging in the stable.
You know the rest of the story: the birth, the startling angelic proclamation to shepherds, society’s lowest rung on the ladder, that the Savior of the world had been born in Bethlehem, the new star moving across the sky.
Amazing, isn’t it, that such an imperfect Christmas Eve could change the world?
If Christmas Eves fail to be perfect from a human perspective, quietly ponder whether that’s the only perspective.  
After all, Christmas was God’s idea. Only His Gift will matter long, long after our last breath escapes us.
Have a blessed Christmas.
Marge Warder is a freelance reporter for the Red Oak Express. She can be contacted at mawarder@yahoo.com.