If you are a Facebook user, from time to time you will be reminded by your past in a feature called “On this day.” I was reminded of Christmas 2009 when this post from 11 years ago popped up:

And just for fun, I called up the music list of all the music we performed in just THREE days: PURE INSANITY!

The number of pieces we performed was absolutely staggering, especially if you consider that there were few repeats, if any, and all those carol arrangements were not always so easy. Plus there were the “biggies”: Schubert’s “Deutsche Messe,” Victoria’s “Missa o magnum mysterium,” Cantata 151 Süßer Trost, mein Jesus kömmt; In dulci jubilo (a cantata by Dietrich Buxtehude); and a chorus from the Christmas Oratorio, “Ehre sei dir Gott gesungen, BWV 248.” I guess the Baroque pieces were the bulk of the sixteenth notes I was referring to in my post.

And to think we always put on a big Christmas Day dinner to boot! PURE MADNESS.

And here’s a gallery of all the food we made!

I used to say that Carl Crosier never knew when to quit!

And yet, as I am now listening to the broadcast of Lessons and Carols from Kings College, I am feeling just a tiny bit nostalgic for “the good ol’ days.” Click here to go to the Minnesota Public Radio broadcast to hear this year’s Lessons and Carols and download the printed program. (By the way, I was glad to hear that the Lutheran Church of Honolulu Choir is still sponsoring the local Hawaii broadcast of this program, as it has for more than 40 years.) As you may recall, we spent two Christmas Eves “standing in the queue” at Kings College, waiting to enter the chapel, whose vaulted ceiling makes music come alive and sound magical.

Ah, this year is so different. For the last 8 years I’ve spent Christmas with my family in California, which all was rather low-key at best. This year, though, I’m alone in Hawaii, I’ve already prerecorded my Christmas organ music, and although I’ll be cooking a more modest Christmas dinner tomorrow for my friends, who will just pick up the food from me and then return to their apartments to eat it, it’s just not the same.

If you’d like to view the 38th annual Christmas letter (“The Crosier Chronicle”), you can click here.

Here’s hoping that 2021 will be more “normal!” Merry Christmas, everyone!