My birthday is tomorrow. I was born on the second Sunday of Advent, the day on which the afternoon Christmas Pageant service was traditionally scheduled. My mother, Marion, and her best friend, Jane, were on their way to the 4:30 p.m. service when I made my intentions known. Apparently, I was in a hurry to get the holidays underway.
As the story goes, the two young women briefly debated whether to go to church and sing some of their favorite carols before going to the hospital. They wisely by-passed St. Peter’s Episcopal Church and continued on to the other side of town to All Souls Hospital. It wasn’t long before I commenced my joyful noise. My mother still tells with amazement that she was only in labor with me for a half-an- hour.
Just this morning she reminisced, “You were in a real hurry to get here, and when you arrived, you were so at peace…a sweet lovely baby. You only cried a little bit, and then you seemed captivated by everything going on around you.”
Her friend Jane later became my Godmother, and it was she who, when I turned 30, recounted the day of my birth as if it were a fairytale. It was my turn to be amazed. How often had I been an angel in the Christmas pageant? How many times over my lifetime had I sung myself into tears with my rendition of “Away in the Manger” and “Silent Night.”
But not until the night Jane gifted me with her version of my birth did I understand I was born on what had become one of my most favorite days of the Christian Advent calendar.
Jane said she and my mother sang verses of “O Come All Ye Faithful” between contractions. ("O Come All Ye Faithful!") It tickles me to think that the carol I so love actually invited me out of the womb, and I responded with a big swooshing “Yes!”
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