"Christ Child's Lullaby"

By Mary M. Isaacs

     Rose hurried, so she wouldn’t miss the beginning of the church service. It was already too late for her to take her place in the choir—she couldn’t have, anyway, because of the cold and laryngitis that had crept up on her the past several days. She knew it was coming and it made her heart sink. There was nothing Rose loved more than singing, and she especially looked forward to Christmas time when she could sing the beautiful music she had adored and sung since childhood. She knew she had a good voice—her friends told her that, choir directors told her that, even strangers in church said so. That didn’t matter, one way or another. She just loved to sing; she would sing even if her voice had been plain and ordinary.


     She buttoned up her overcoat and put on a woolen cap, gloves, and snow boots. It was bitterly cold outside, and the forecast had called for more snow sometime before morning. Even though it was too late to protect her voice from the cold, Rose still needed to keep warm. The church was very large; good for singing but bad for warmth. As she was not going to be in the relatively sheltered group of singers standing shoulder-to-shoulder, but instead sitting in a cold wooden pew by herself, she needed the heavy outer clothing.

     She remembered to turn the heat down in her small apartment. She also left a few lights on, as her parents had advised when she moved to the city. After locking the door, she hastened down the stairs and out through the glass doors of the lobby. No one was around—too cold, too late at night. Everyone was either snug at home, or already where they were going for the evening. She turned at the corner and made her way down several blocks, avoiding icy patches and leftover drifts of snow...

(To continue reading "Christ Child's Lullaby", you can find it as part of the collection "Christ Child's Lullaby", or "Holiday Stories", available at Amazon in either paperback or Kindle.)
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Note: “The Christ Child’s Lullaby” is an English translation of a much longer traditional Gaelic Christmas song, “Taladh Chriosda,” from the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.

Mary M. Isaacs

copyright 2018