Fellowship & Fairydust

The box was probably dated even when my parents bought it. A long, squat black box with slots for cassette tapes, a thin shelf for inserting CDs, dials that were not to be spun, buttons that clacked and popped. It sat in the corner of the living room, adjacent to the huge stone fireplace. It was a huge room in a huge house, and there were other things in it. I remember the room held looming black bookshelves, a painting of a neighborhood lined with palm trees, a window covering almost an entire wall. Somehow, whenever I remember that room, the box comes up more than anything else.

The box felt important. It was a way to hear Garrison Keillor’s stories about “Guy Noir, Private Eye,” when we got home from church. It wasn’t until nearly a decade later I discovered that Guy Noir was one of many characters on a program I only gotten glimpses of. The box also seemed alive at times. Whenever a tape or CD was inserted, a thin line of reddish lights appeared on top of the buttons. The lights rose and fell, appeared and faded as the noises changed. It was like watching a dragon smack its lips, reveal and unveil its teeth.

One late November day, when I was perhaps six, the box was surrounded by packing materials. Cardboard boxes, tissue paper, Christmas lights and plastic crates covered the tiled floor. The adults were “getting ready for Christmas.” At some point during this bustle, one of my parents took a CD out of a plastic case. The cover read “Michael W Smith: Christmas Time” and showed a man with bowed head in a red sweatshirt, standing on a wicker chair in a snowfield. The CD went into the box, and the adults kept working. I sat in the room’s corner and listened as the music began.

Stringed instruments came in first. Then several voices began singing a wordless melody. Then electronic instruments and bells arrived, then a choir came in:

Ring Christmas bells, 

ring them loud,

with the message ringing 

peace on the earth, tidings of good cheer… 

Come carolers 

come and join with the angels 

singing joy to the earth, 

Christmas time is here again…*

It wasn’t a liturgical song exactly – the electronic instruments ruled that out. But for a Protestant boy attending Air Force chapel services, it was as close as I would get for a long time. I stayed in the corner as the song played. It felt like I couldn’t move. I knew that the box wasn’t making the noise. I wasn’t clear on exactly what CDs or tapes did, but I recognized the song had a singer that I had heard on my father’s car stereo. That meant the disk put the music into the box, and could take it elsewhere. Years later, staying in a small hostel in Mongolia, I would discover the CD’s title and buy a copy for myself. Something about that moment, and that box, made the song feel much more. It permeated the room, sent it ringing into my ears and around the plastic crate of Christmas books. It etched the scene – the tiled floor, the cluttered boxes, the line of battered cassette tapes in front of the box – into my mind. Everything about that scene became Christmas time for me.

* “Christmastime” written by Michael W. Smith and Joanna Carlson. From Christmastime, 1998 album released by Reunion (Sony Music Entertainment).