Ten O'clock on a Christmas MorningYeah, so my face is obscured and this is the only picture, but there's enough pictures of me around here anyway.
Shirley leading the singing, Orbert on Keyboards, Michael on Violin, Laura on Viola
(horrible picture of Laura, who is amazingly hot but somehow always takes horrible pictures)
Christmas on a Sunday doesn't come around often enough for there to be a "regular" way to do it, meaning that we could do whatever we want with it. It's a given that attendance will be low but also unpredictable, so this lent itself towards doing something unconventional. Our organist is taking a few weeks to visit family back home, so they asked me if we could set up the Yamaha keyboard and we could just sing carols in the Fellowship Hall. Informal service, coffee, juice and cinnamon rolls, lots of singing. I told them that that sounded awesome except the Yamaha needs work so I'll just bring my own gear, and of course that was cool.
I set up over by the Christmas Tree, and when Shirley (director) arrived, she'd talked Michael and Laura into joining me, which was a surprise but perfectly welcome. It was cool, playing carols off of lead sheets, I could let them do countermelodies and harmonies and I could go nuts filling in the bottom and middle and everything else. There aren't a lot of what I'd call "real musicians" in the congregation, but Michael and Laura are two of them. We did some impromptu instrumentals for prelude, offertory, and postlude, just winging it. It was sweet. Had a cinnamon roll and some coffee, then packed up and went home so we could open presents and stuff. Perfect way to spend a Christmas morning, with a gig.