What is it about Christmas carols? Not the Holly-Jolly-Winter-Wonderland -Rock-Around-the- Christmas -Tree kind; the carols we sang with our kids evenings during advent season in years past. Tears flow at the singing of Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Angels We Have Heard on High, Silent Night, the First Noel, Joy to the World, O Come All Ye Faithful or God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen . . .

I suppose the explanation is simple. I sang these carols as a child with my family and we sang them with our children too. Now one voice is forever missing.

Last year, I went to Christmas Concerts prepared with plenty of tissues for the deluge of tears I knew would come. I knew to be prepared because I’d had to pull the car over and cry my heart out when Silent Night randomly played from my playlist the previous Spring.

Months have passed, so tonight when we went to hear six of our nine grandchildren sing in their school Christmas Concert, it didn’t occur to me that seeing and hearing nine year old Zelie sing The First Noel along with her classmates would hit me so hard. My whole body tightened, so only a few tears escaped. Our youngest granddaughter almost a year old now, proved a welcome distraction throughout much of the hour long concert.

Perhaps, moved by beauty and goodness, I also wept for joy. Joy and sorrow are inextricably mingled.