Don’t mind me—after studying Spanish intensively over the past three years, I’m afraid that I’m thinking in Spanish! “¡Qué raro!” means “how strange” or in my way of thinking, “how weird!”

What I’m talking about was today’s service, dubbed Christmas in July. Apparently it’s a common occurrence in many United Church of Christ churches — to sing Christmas carols, hear Christmas music, and the like on the closest Sunday to July 25th, exactly six months before Christmas. It’s also an opportunity to raise funds for the United Church of Christ Christmas Fund, which provides “emergency grants, supplementation of small annuities and health premiums, and Christmas ‘Thank You’ gift checks each December to lower-income retired pastors and other lay retirees.

For commercial entities, there are Christmas in July sales — perhaps a way of drumming up sales.

The origin may have come from an 1892 opera called “Werther” in which a bunch of children rehearse a Christmas carol in July. There’s even a Wikipedia entry for “Christmas in July”:

The term, if not the exact concept, was given national attention with the release of the Hollywood movie comedy Christmas in July in 1940, written and directed by Preston Sturges. In the story, a man is fooled into believing he has won $25,000 in an advertising slogan contest. He buys presents for family, friends, and neighbors, and proposes marriage to his girlfriend.

In 1942, the Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, D.C. celebrated Christmas in July with carols and the sermon “Christmas Presents in July”. They repeated it in 1943, with a Christmas tree covered with donations. The pastor explained that the special service was patterned after a program held each summer at his former church in Philadelphia, when the congregation would present Christmas gifts early to give ample time for their distribution to missions worldwide. It became an annual event, and in 1945, the service began to be broadcast over local radio.

… The Hallmark Channel and its companion outlets (Hallmark Drama and Hallmark Movies & Mysteries) run blocks of their original Christmas television films in July to coincide with the release of the Keepsake Ornaments in stores, thus literally making the event a Hallmark holiday (an accusation that Hallmark Cards officially denies).

Last year, the children at Nuuanu Congregational Church even had a snow day (!) with artificial snow trucked in and dumped in the church parking lot!

Pastor Jeannie Thompson in her sermon today said that Christmas was meant to upend our usual way of thinking, and see the world upside down. I couldn’t help but think about people in South America who celebrate Christmas in the summer rather than the winter!

I went back and re-read what I wrote last year, “Christmas in July,” and apparently Pastor Jeannie had forgotten to choose Christmas hymns for the service a year ago. This year, however, she remembered and chose “Away in a manger,” “In the bleak midwinter,” “Angels from the realms of glory,” “O come all ye faithful,” and “Hark the herald angels sing.” Heck, I even pulled out the David Willcocks harmonizations from the green carol book!

I decided to play two less familiar tunes for the prelude and postlude, Paul Manz’ “Still, still, still” and “Savior of the Nations, Come.” A parishioner after the service asked me what I thought about playing Christmas music on this day, and my answer to her was “Weird!” She told me, however, she thought the congregation had great fun singing Christmas carols in July.