Maybe I've watched Rick Steves' European Christmas one too many times, but as I walked across the St. Olaf College campus on Friday night, I could almost hear the bespectacled host's narration. "...And here in Minnesota, thousands of people travel from across the country to hear a multitude of young men and women sing songs of praise and fellowship, prayers for peace on Earth and good will towards all."
While Skoglund Center, with its artificial climbing wall, isn't quite as ancient as some of the venues where worshippers gather in Europe, the St. Olaf Christmas Festival is about as ancient as holiday celebrations get here in the bread basket of the New World. With 102 years of history, the Christmas Festival has become a cherished tradition for generations of Minnesotans — and, whether through travel or through American Public Media's syndicated radio broadcasts, for people across the country.
As an unapologetic Christmas fan and a proud Minnesotan, it might seem surprising that prior to this year I'd never attended the annual festival — but I was raised Catholic, and taken to the sort of church services where the bass section was a guy beating a tambourine; the soprano section was a lady with a 12-string guitar; and the tenor section was the beaming, tuneless priest. By the time I had an extended encounter with Minnesota's great choral tradition — as a student at the classically-inclined St. Agnes School — I was a distracted teenager.
Friday's excursion to Northfield, then, was for me an entry to a new world: a world of those Lutheran traditions that I'd heard Garrison Keillor talk about but I'd rarely experienced firsthand. Norwegian sweaters were ubiquitous, and when the shuttle bus motor hiccuped en route down the hill from Buntrock Commons, a woman near me worried, "Someone's lutefisk is going to make a repeat appearance!"
As we settled into what might be the world's most acoustically sound basketball gymnasium, I looked at the empty choral risers and realized that I hadn't quite prepared myself for the magnitude of the forces gathering outside the doors. I listened to the student behind me explain to his parents: we'd be treated to seasonal songs performed by a full student orchestra and what amounts to a complete varsity/JV/freshman roster of student choirs. The singers alone would number twice the entire student population of my high school. Whatever happened up there, we were definitely going to hear it.
The sound of the St. Olaf Christmas Festival, though, turned out to be a surprisingly delicate one. Though the massed forces of the St. Olaf Choir, the St. Olaf Cantorei, the St. Olaf Chapel Choir, the Manitou Singers, and the Viking Chorus would make Mahler happy, they weren't there to blow the roof off the joint with a supersized Hallelujah chorus or to shout the Good News across the Cannon Valley.
The mood of the festival turned out to be contemplative and quietly devotional. Appropriately for a celebration of Christ's birth, the orchestral parts were largely delicate and lucid: more like the sun cresting over Strauss's Alps than beating straight down on them. We were asked to hold our applause to the end, underlining the fact that the festival is about praising the Almighty, not about congratulating the choirs for nailing their parts. (Which, of course, they did — and it was admittedly difficult to sit on my hands after the rousing Swahili Alleluyah Sasa!)
Prior to the performance I interviewed some of the attendees, several of whom turned out to be alumni who make yearly pilgrimages from far-flung states to return to Northfield and inaugurate their holiday celebrations with what one woman described as a calming, centering, profoundly spiritual experience.
I'm only partially alluding to the athletic-center setting (and the fact that the woman sitting next to me was taking notes in her program, like a scorecard) when I say that the festival struck me as the choral-mecca equivalent of a homecoming game — with the emphasis on homecoming, a pure celebration of community without any competition. Well, maybe there's a friendly cribbage match or two played around the hotel swimming pools afterward.
Now that I've attended the St. Olaf Christmas Festival, I feel like I understand a little bit more about my Minnesota neighbors and our peerless tradition of choral music — a tradition that's especially treasured at the holidays, this special season when traditions seem to mean the most. That said, I know I still have a lot to learn: next year, I'm going back for the lutefisk.
Classical MPR will broadcast the 2015 St. Olaf Christmas Festival at 3:00 p.m. on Dec. 6.
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