I mostly associate the term “Christmas in July” as a retail event, when stores advertise Christmas merchandise in an effort to boost lagging sales. There’s even a Wikipedia entry for this:

Christmas in July or Christmas in Summer is a second Christmas celebration held around the summer season, mainly during July. It is centered around Christmas-themed activities and entertainment, including small gatherings, seasonal music and specials, and shopping, with the goal of getting the public in the “Christmas spirit” during the summer season in the Northern hemisphere.

You can further read that the phenomenon originated with the 1892 publication of a French opera called “Werther,” in which the opera’s opening scene, a group of children rehearses a Christmas song in July, to which a character responds: “When you sing Christmas in July, you rush the season.” 

Whatever. For all of my life, I’ve mostly ignored it until now when I found out that Nuuanu Congregational Church will celebrate “Christmas in July” on July 25th, six months before December 25. It’s an occasion to raise money for a Christmas fund.

According to an article in the church newsletter:

Every July Nuuanu Congregational Church takes up a collection for Christmas in July. This money goes to fill grant requests for emergency aid for retired ministers and lay church workers in the United Church of Christ. Typically the requests come from individuals who have retired from small churches with limited means.

However, this year grant requests have skyrocketed due to the Covid pandemic, with requests coming from larger churches as well. The need is acute and urgent. The typical grant request is for two thousand dollars. Ninety five cents of each dollar raised goes directly to those needing help. Please support the Christmas Fund as generously as you are able when we take up the collection on July 25, 2021.

Pastor Jeannie encouraged me to play Christmas music on that day, but as it turned out, she picked non-Christmas hymns. I will be playing some of the lesser-known carols for the prelude, introit and postlude, nothing overtly Christmas but certainly pieces I would play during the Advent and Christmas season: Paul Manz’s settings of “What is this lovely fragrance” for the prelude; “Lo, how a rose is growing” for the introit; and “Let all together praise our God” (Lobt Gott, ihr Christen allzugleich) for the postlude.

Believe me, after years of only playing Advent music in the run-up to Christmas, and waiting to play Christmas music until December 24th, this is a first for me!

The children of the church will also enjoy a Snow Day that Sunday! Obviously, it will be man-made and will be trucked in. That’s not to say there is only artificial snow in Hawaii — Paul Deanno writes: “It turns out that snow isn’t even that uncommon in Hawaii.  It happens almost every winter.  You may be wondering, “How is that possible?  Hawaii is where everybody wants to visit on vacation in the winter because it’s so warm there!”.  And you’re absolutely right.  Thanks to the balmy Pacific Ocean water that surrounds the islands that make up Hawaii, coastal areas stay quite warm all 12 months on the calendar.”

It’s the top of Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii which reaches 4,205 meters, or 13,803 feet and Mauna Loa at 13,678 feet above sea level, which see snow almost every year.

Now you know!