A Night of Watching

Mack Hall


Silent night, holy night,
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child.
Holy Infant, so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace,
Sleep in heavenly peace.

-- Mohr and Gruber, 1818

“Christmas…in all his bluff and hearty honesty” (Dickens, 1836) is near, and most of us will be blessed in celebrating this ancient Feast at home with our families, warm and under cover. We can attend a Christmas Eve liturgy and wrap gifts and sleep in earthly (at least) peace because a great many others will be on duty keeping us safe in the long watches of the night.

In the cold beneath the wild and snowy Hindu Kush and along the banks of rivers that Abraham knew, young Americans will be on patrol on Christmas Eve, keeping Osama Bin Ladin and his merry-less men too busy to shoot at the rest of us.

And in our own country, too, men and women will stand to and stand up on Christmas Eve: police, firefighters, utility crews, and medical staffs will count themselves blessed if they can take a few minutes for a cup of acrid, staff-room coffee on the night of the Savior’s birth.

Somewhere under the cold stars of Christmas Eve a cop will give a crying child a teddy bear and try to comfort him when his little world is made cruel by a drunk adult.

On this sacred night fire crews will roll because of a badly-wired tree or a flaming car wreck.

If the ice falling in the silent night takes down the electricity, our rural electric co-op crews will forsake their warm beds and take the trucks out in the sleet to spend cold hours making the rest of us warm again. If the Star of Christmas were to wink out (it won’t, of course), we can be sure that a Jasper-Newton Electric Co-Op truck would soon be rolling up with a crew to mend it.

EMT crews, driving ambulances pulled by eight huge cylinders rather than by eight tiny reindeer, will carry the gift of life on Christmas Eve. In the hospitals and nursing homes dedicated caregivers will be as the shepherds of long ago who came to the Stable when called, serving Christ in the long, long night by serving His people.

We are all called to lives of duty, not of privilege, and thank God for those who respond to that call better than the rest of us do. The Christmas of those who watch and serve in the night is especially holy. I hope they know that.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

-- Longfellow, 1864