Christmas Eve services were absent from my childhood. It's the New Year's Eve service I remember.
Magic dangled over the precipice between today and tomorrow, history about to unfold, with the promise that nothing would never be the same again. I never really cared for change, but I liked staying up late.
The service would have been short, designed so that we'd be on our knees at the stroke of midnight. Though there was no stroke, the hands of the clock ticked silently and far away on the back wall of the sanctuary. I would sneak-a-peek (okay, many peeks), mesmerized by the distant future and determined to see it click alive with my own eyes. I understood being bathed in God's presence as a new year began, but I felt cheated that a year disappear without fanfare, the believers' eyes opening somewhere after 12:05 with a reverent amen.
Fear trapped me there on my knees. I believed God would choose the most obvious time to send His Son back to earth with a trumpet blast. Afraid I wasn't quite ready, I'd worry over my sins, watching and praying. It's silly to think the God who promised an end when we least expected it, would use the nonsynchronized hands of a church clock in Minnesota as his countdown trigger. For goodness sake, we weren't even on eastern standard time.
After a closing song, the faithful watchers were released to the basement for all kinds of sweet goodies. My friends were there, and we filled our bottomless stomachs for a king-of-the-hill match on top of a 15-foot high mound of snow pushed together by city trucks in the parking lot.
All reverance forgotten, we pushed and scraped for supremacy, our mothers calling us to the car before we could ascend the throne.
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