Uncle Kees'
Christmas Rebellion
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uring my boyhood in Holland, Christmas was by no
means a joyous celebration. Even the
singing of carols was considered tantamount to blasphemy, and festive candles
and gaily decorated fir trees were deemed pagan abominations.
But one old-fashioned Christmas lingers in my mind with
delight. It was bitter cold in the great church that morning, for the vast nave
and transept were unheated. Worshipers
pulled the collars of their overcoats up around their chins and sat with their
hands in their pockets. Women wrapped
their shawls tightly around their shoulders.
When the congregation sang, their breath steamed up on faint white
clouds toward the golden chandeliers.
The regular organist had sent word to my Uncle Kees that he was
too ill to fulfill his duties. Kees,
happy at the opportunity to play the great organ, now sat in the loft peering
down through the curtains on the congregation of about 2,000 souls. He had taken me with him into the organ loft.
The organ, a towering structure, reached upward a full 125
feet. It was renowned throughout the
land and indeed throughout all Europe.
The wind for the organ was provided by a man treading over a huge pedal
consisting of twelve parallel beams.
In his sermon the preacher struck a pessimistic note. Christmas, he said, signified the descent of
God into the tomb of human flesh, “that charnel house of corruption and dead
bones.” He dwelt sadistically on our
human depravity, our utter worthlessness, tainted as we were from birth with
original sin. The dominie groaned and
members of the congregation bowed their heads in awful awareness of their
guilt.
As the sermon progressed Kees grew more and more restless. He scratched his head and tugged at his
mustache and goatee. He could scarcely
sit still.
“Man, man,” he muttered, shaking his head, “are these the good
tidings, is that the glad message?” And
turning to me he whispered fiercely, “That man smothers the hope of the world
in the dustbin of theology!”
We sang a doleful psalm by way of interlude, and the sermon,
which had already lasted an hour and forty minutes, moved toward its
climax. It ended in so deep a note of
despair that across the years I still feel a recurrence of the anguish I then
experienced. It was more than likely,
the minister threw out by way of a parting shot, that of his entire
congregation not a single soul would enter the kingdom of heaven. Many were called, but few were chosen.
Kees shook with indignation as the minister concluded. For a moment I feared that he could walk off
in a huff and not play the Bach postlude, or any postlude at all. Down below, the preacher could be seen
lifting his hands for the benediction.
Kees suddenly threw off his jacket, kicked off his shoes, and pulled out
all the stops on the organ. When the
minister had finished there followed a moment of intense silence.
Kees waited an instant longer while the air poured into the
instrument. His face was set and grim and he looked extremely pale. Then throwing his head back and opening his
mouth as if he were going to shout, he brought his fingers down on the
keyboard. HAL-LE-LU-JAH! HALLELUJAH!
HALLELUJAH!
The organ roared the tremendous finale of Handel's chorus of Messiah. And again with an abrupt
crashing effect, as if a million voices burst into song, HAL-LE-LU-JAH! HALLELUJAH!
HALLELUJAH! The music swelled and
rolled with the boom of thunder against the vaulted dome, returning again and
again with the blast of praise like breakers bursting on the seashore.
Kees beckoned to me.
“More air!” he called out.
I ran into the bellows chamber, where Leendert Bols was
stamping down the beams like a madman, transported by the music, waving his
arms in the air.
“More air!” I shouted.
“He wants more air!”
“Hallelujah!” Leendert
shouted back. “Hallelujah!” He grabbed me by the arm and together we
fairly broke into a trot on the pedal beams.
Then the anthem came to a close. But Kees was not finished yet. Now the organ sang out sweetly the Dutch
people's most beloved evangelical song:
“The Name above Every Name, the Name of Jesus,” sung to the tune very
similar to “Home, Sweet Home.”
We sang it with all our heart, Leendert and I, as did the
congregation on its way out.
It was a tornado of melody that Kees had unleashed. Mountains leaped into joy. The hills and the seas clapped their hands in
gladness. Heaven and earth, the voices
of men and angels, seemed joined in a hymn of praise to a God who did not doom
and damn, but who so loved, loved, loved the world.
(Pierre
Van Paassen, Christmas Classics)
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