Holiday Chapel
One of my favorite chapel days at Harding is the annual Holiday Band chapel. I enjoyed it as a student, but I think I may love it even more now that I am an alumna and a staff member. Probably because it gives me an excuse to get out of the office. Yesterday morning I closed up the music office and walked briskly in the less than 40 degree sunshine to that Mecca of Harding: the Benson.
For those of you non-Harding folk, the Benson is the largest auditorium on campus with a capacity of 3,600. Each week day morning at 9 AM, the undergraduate student body and many of the faculty gather in the Benson for a chapel service. Holiday Chapel includes a short devotional and then the Holiday Band playing Christmas songs!
As usual, the highlight of the program is when the band plays Sleigh Ride. This is not your grandmother's Sleigh Ride...well, maybe it is, but that's not the point. The point is that this is audience participation Sleigh Ride. Everyone gets out two items: their keys to add to the 'sleigh bells' and the song book in the rack below their seat. Song books lay open on laps across the Benson as we wait for the 'whip' moments in the song. At the appropriate moments, the audience will take those open song books and slam them shut in unison. Or as close to unison as a group of 3,600+ church of Christ folk can possibly get. For instance:
"There's a birthday party at the home of farm- SLAM -er Gray. It will be the perfect ending to a per- SLAM -ect day."
If you have never heard the sound of over 3,000 hymn books being slammed shut at once, you don't know what you are missing. If you have never participated in such an event, let me tell you, there is something satisfying and invigorating in the act that makes me feel deliciously devious and reprehensible, like I am about to get caught with my hands in the cookie jar. Only I'm not because for this one day, for this one song, it is not only acceptable, it's expected.
Alas, I fear for future generations of Harding students who will not get to experience the thrill of slamming a song book closed in time to a favorite Christmas song. The Benson seats were reupholstered this past summer and the song book racks were removed from the bottom of the seats. However, many of the upperclassmen came prepared with textbooks. The lack of slamming from the balcony told me that the freshmen had no idea what was going on.
That is what saddens me. Each year fewer students will know the tradition of slamming books shut during 'Sleigh Ride'. Am I watching the slow death of a favored tradition? I hope not, but it looks that way.
Clap if you believe in fairies!
 |
| Photo courtesy of Ann Cowan Dixon Archives & Special Collections, Harding University https://flic.kr/p/6xka2T |
As usual, the highlight of the program is when the band plays Sleigh Ride. This is not your grandmother's Sleigh Ride...well, maybe it is, but that's not the point. The point is that this is audience participation Sleigh Ride. Everyone gets out two items: their keys to add to the 'sleigh bells' and the song book in the rack below their seat. Song books lay open on laps across the Benson as we wait for the 'whip' moments in the song. At the appropriate moments, the audience will take those open song books and slam them shut in unison. Or as close to unison as a group of 3,600+ church of Christ folk can possibly get. For instance:
"There's a birthday party at the home of farm- SLAM -er Gray. It will be the perfect ending to a per- SLAM -ect day."
If you have never heard the sound of over 3,000 hymn books being slammed shut at once, you don't know what you are missing. If you have never participated in such an event, let me tell you, there is something satisfying and invigorating in the act that makes me feel deliciously devious and reprehensible, like I am about to get caught with my hands in the cookie jar. Only I'm not because for this one day, for this one song, it is not only acceptable, it's expected.
Alas, I fear for future generations of Harding students who will not get to experience the thrill of slamming a song book closed in time to a favorite Christmas song. The Benson seats were reupholstered this past summer and the song book racks were removed from the bottom of the seats. However, many of the upperclassmen came prepared with textbooks. The lack of slamming from the balcony told me that the freshmen had no idea what was going on.
That is what saddens me. Each year fewer students will know the tradition of slamming books shut during 'Sleigh Ride'. Am I watching the slow death of a favored tradition? I hope not, but it looks that way.
Clap if you believe in fairies!
Comments