Christmas Pageantry

‘Twas the week before Christmas and all through the town,

Motorists were driving with windows rolled down . . .

And what to my wondering eye should appear,

But parched lawns, summer clothing and an ad for cold beer.

*

It was beginning to feel a lot like August, despite the proliferation of twinkling lights and seasonal decorations adorning the Valley’s boulevards.

Even belting out Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” during my morning and evening commutes--preparation for tonight’s “Messiah” sing-along at the Music Center--left me uninspired and longing for the December snowmen and sled rides of my Pennsylvania youth.

But those sugarplum fantasies gave way to a different nostalgia when I visited John F. Kennedy High School in Granada Hills the other day and witnessed a ritual that was undoubtedly unfolding in elementary, middle and high schools all over the city that balmy evening.

Walking toward the school’s Little Theater, my attention was diverted by a cacophony of tubas, trumpets, flutes and saxophones drifting through the open doors of a rehearsal room, where the band and choir were warming up for the evening’s entertainment.

“Ohmigod, I’m sooo nervous,” said Erica Cantrell, a freshman who was about to make her singing debut--albeit with 13 other students--in one hour. “I can’t believe I’m singing in front of all those people.”

“Quiet you guys, we’re trying to practice!” shouted a quintet of woodwind players attempting an eleventh-hour stab at “Frosty the Snowman.”

Their pleas went unheeded amid the racket.

Freshman boys sporting white dress shirts and spiked ‘dos easily navigated the steamy band room, the floor of which was strewn with empty instrument cases. Hangers holding nothing but empty dry-cleaning bags were suspended from chairs like ghosts, swishing every time a student walked by.

Amid the ruckus, two boys sat on a piano bench thumbing through last season’s yearbook, as though school had just let out for the summer. Nearby, 16-year-old Melissa Patterson, a vision in blue velvet, sat stoically clutching her tenor sax.

“I’m not practicing because I don’t feel like it,” she said in defense of her inactivity.

In the corridor outside the band room, a trio of robed choir girls broke into an a capella “Oh Happy Day”--their hips swaying and hands clapping--then abruptly switched to a soulful rendition of “Silent Night.”

“Does anyone know what comes after ‘all is bright?’ ” Erica Cantrell asked a handful of spectators as the song petered out after only a few bars. By then her friends had begun moving toward the Little Theater, the seats of which were only barely occupied five minutes before show time.

I found a seat in the third row next to a group of band members who fidgeted and whistled “The Twelve Days of Christmas” while awaiting the choral portion of the concert.

Some stray choir members, their long velvet solo dresses peeking out of their choir robes, negotiated the aisles, greeting their families and friends. Other singers giggled as they poked their heads through the stage curtains.

As parents and teachers filed into the hall, I drifted off to another high school auditorium, this one in Van Nuys, where I and my fellow choir members were about to open our winter concert.

Under the direction of G. H. Greb, who I thought bore a striking resemblance to Paul Newman, I was sure in that moment that my future lay on Broadway, a notion that was shattered the following spring when I blew my audition for the Vannaires, Greb’s elite singing ensemble.

The winter concerts, though, were special, always attracting an audience that spilled into the foyer. Pairing “Sunrise, Sunset” with the “Hallelujah Chorus” didn’t strike me as any more absurd than my elementary school pairings of dreidels and drummer boys.

What mattered most was locating my parents, who always found a seat up close and who fulfilled their parental obligation to clap loudly after my songs, although they couldn’t distinguish my voice from the other 30 or so singers onstage with me.

Back in Kennedy’s Little Theater, the lights dimmed, and I watched parents zeroing in on their children standing on bleachers beneath the stage, and smiled as they offered the same unconditional support my parents had given me decades ago.

No one seemed to notice that David Tautkus, Kennedy’s band and choir director, played the same three chords for each of the eight carols that opened the show (he later rocked the house with his tuba playing).

Midway through the sing-along, several choir members held up visual aids to remind the audience on which of the “Twelve Days” the geese were a-laying and on which the maids were a-milking.

Soloists Rebecca Barajas and Nicole Truhill were accompanied

by calls from the audience of “You go girl!” and “Bring it home now,” a response that Tautkus vowed to eradicate before the spring concert next year.

After 23 numbers, including solos, quintets, a duet and the sing-along, the concert ended. The band students, flush with success, embraced each other, then tucked their instruments into their cases and headed for home.

“Sarah, get some people to help you clean up the auditorium,” Tautkus said, a reminder that this was, after all, school, not Carnegie Hall.

“Everything went just as expected,” he said. “Even though their numbers aren’t huge, you certainly can’t beat their enthusiasm.”

And snowbanks be damned, that’s what it’s all about, after all.