The Christmas Cantata: A Short Story With a Remarkably Fecund Ending

Last updated on: December 21, 2016 at 12:27 am by John Mark N. Reynolds

The Christmas Cantata: A Short Story With a Remarkably Fecund Ending 2016-12-21T00:27:05-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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She plays on.

Does anyone perform a cantata any more? What is a cantata anyway?

When I was young, they were everywhere: a strange blend of musical theater, opera, and Handel if Handel had written for Evangelicals who sang SATB. John W. Peterson was the Man of Many Cantatas and oddly enough I enjoyed them.

One year in particular, she was playing for the cantata, back home from Wheaton. In tenth grade, I had asked her if she liked me and she had said that she was waiting on God. God was taking a great deal of time in answering my question. It was six years later and God still had said nothing to her. She continued to be cool, beautiful, unattainable, and amazingly gifted at just about everything.

Meanwhile, as usual I was hurting and sad. . . but the cantata was helpful. Sitting in the back of a church music group with the guys is not strenuous musical work. Mostly we would joke around, then strain to read our music: with luck we would get a great many of the same note so we could find our place. Pity the extraordinarily gifted musician (an Eastman grad!) laboring away at the organ helping the dedicated choir director work to coax some notes that were not flat from those of us who claimed to be tenors.

That she was going to play the trumpet was most excellent.

Dad had told me that she was (finally!) free of all other commitments, so perhaps there might be a chance to say “hello.” And there was not. Not one chance. She sat off to the left on the stage, about as far away from the tenors as a girl could be. I might as well have been looking at Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom for all the chance I had to get near enough to her to speak.

It was hopeless. We would work on our parts, she would play, and then disappear. God evidently had not told her to check the “I like you” box on my tenth grade note yet and I did not look likely to get another chance to speak to her. She was very serious about her music and the ministry possibilities of a cantata.

I was getting very serious about her, but practice would drag forward with no chance for the choir to talk to the band. It was maddening.

Finally, somebody, I am not sure who, but God bless them everyone, organized a class reunion for our Christian school. And there I got a chance to speak and ask her if she would get Chinese food after the cantata. She said “yes,” because free food was good and she was merciful.

I was happy and soared with every high note that John W. Peterson wrote for the end of every climactic cantata number. At the end, we would have dinner and it was Christmas and I was happy. The cantata, whatever that is, went very well, people were happy, and the Christ was celebrated. And then we went to dinner.

I am not sure I have ever gotten over that dinner to this day. It was Christmas and she was so serious. . . when I was . . . not. I need serious. She was holy . . . and I was . . . not. She was hopeful . . . and I was not. Yet somehow she enjoyed dinner and by the New Year had agreed to marry me.

Thirty-one Christmas times later she may keep me. Cantatas are most excellent.

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