Christmas music and Goose bumps

The music of the season surrounds us. No matter where we might be it finds us. Almost like a staker sneaking up on us and before we know it … there it is. An usher at our local theatre said, “When we started playing the Christmas CDs I wasn’t too thrilled, but it has a way of growing on you. I am kind of getting into the holiday mood now.” Aren’t we all.

Christmas music has filled our home for a few weeks now. Most of the time it is simply resting in the background, filling in the gaps of living out our days of preparation. There are times that we find ourselves, much to our surprise, singing along – our souls response to the beautiful message being shared.

I do have some favorites – Dominick the Christmas Donkey and Grandma Got Runover by a Reindeer – they just bring a smile to my face, but there are others which touches something deeper within my soul. These Christmas carols lifts the spirit and connects me to the Divine. When I first entered the ministry I was a pureist … Advent hymns during Advent and Christmas carols during Christmas, but there was something missing year after year in the church’s life until we started to include the carols during all the Sunday’s leading up to December 25th … the lay people actually did know more than the preacher.

Last week Jim Harnish, senior pastor of Hyde Park United Methodist Church, Tampa, FL wrote in his weekly internet message, “Faith Matters,” about music and goose bumps. Here, in part, is some of what he shared:

Preachers know that anything we say on Christmas Eve is less important than how we feel when we sing Silent Night in the glow of the candles. It’s enough to put goose bumps on the spine of Ebenezer Scrooge.

The Science of Goose Bumps

It turns out that goose bumps are a scientifically measurable phenomena. I owe one to former Hyde Park pastor and brother-in-Christ, Magrey deVega, for pointing out the report of a recent study that was published in the journal of Social Psychology and Personality Science.

Scientists found that certain songs can trigger activity in a person’s hypothalamus, the part of the brain responsible for hunger, rage, sex, and involuntary responses like blushing and goose bumps, “sometimes known as aesthetic chills, thrills, shivers, frisson, and even skin orgasms … a seconds-long feeling of goose bumps, tingling and shivers, usually on the scalp, the back of the neck, and the spine, but occasionally across most of the body.” Leave it to the scientists to point out something we already knew!

But they also found that style of music doesn’t matter as much as a person’s deeper engagement with it. As a result, they said, “Messiah, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, and your child’s rendition of Oh Christmas Tree might all give chills (though your kid’s singing might just be scary).” I’ll never forget sitting on the sofa and listening to my then-4-year-old grandson sing The Friendly Beasts. The memory can still bring me to tears.

Listen for the Music

But there’s a catch. The researchers claim that what’s most important is what they identified as a person’s “openness to experience,” one’s willingness to be moved by the music. It’s a reminder that we can be so busy, so wrapped up in the noisy confusion of our lives, so wrapped up in our disappointments and fears that we are no longer open to hear the angel’s songs. As a result, we can miss out on the music.

The classic example is the day that Joshua Bell played his violin in a Washington, D.C., Metro station. For forty-five minutes, one of the world's greatest musicians played some of the world’s greatest music on a $3.5 million violin. Two thousand people passed through the station, but only six stopped to listen. The rest rushed on, with the exception of small children who tried to stop to listen, but their parents pushed them on.

I wonder if that’s what Jesus had in mind when he said we have to be like children to experience the Kingdom of God? Perhaps the reason the shepherds heard the angel’s song is because they were out in the fields with nothing to distract them. They may have been the only people who were open to the experience. And perhaps that’s why Phillips Brooks wrote:
How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given;

So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.

The point of Advent is to prepare us to hear the music and to receive this Christ into our lives. But we probably won’t feel the goose bumps unless we are open to the experience.

The Longest Night

In the northern hemisphere, the darkness is never darker than on Dec. 21. And the truth is that some of us have walked or are walking in the darkness of some kind of loss, defeat, death or spiritual emptiness.

The music of the Christmas season can put you in a certain mood, so to speak, but it cannot answer the deeper needs of our souls. Only as we open our hearts to his presence and allow the warmth of his spirit to surround us can our spirits join the heavenly host in singing “Joy to the world, the Lord has come …”

Quote for today: Joy is the byproduct of obedience. ~Traditional