A Quaker Holiday Story: A “Carpet of Light” (Again) for (Another) Shadowed New Year

“What goes around, comes around (how cliched is that ?)”; “history doesn’t repeat” (is thee sure??); “but it rhymes” (and what rhymes with “Orange”?) . . . Plus  “Deja vu all over again” (and don’t tell me— “this isn’t our first  rodeo . . . .” Aarrghh.)

The parade of platitudes trudged through my mind, arriving at Chapel Hill NC Friends Meeting, Tuesday at dusk, Twelfth Month 24, what the world calls Christmas Eve.

Inside, Friends were trickling in, while a Friend at the other end of the room quietly played a guitar. He strummed a mix of holiday and other tunes. No words, for which I was grateful.

My mood was about as dim as the room, lit by a single candle on a round table covered with reflective aluminum foil. That, and as this is the post-pandemic era, a computer screen behind it emitting a subdued glow for those watching remotely. In the thick shadows, I noted a few people wearing Covid masks. The virus may have been beaten back, but it still lurks, like an invisible vampire.

But it, and god help us, polio, might be due for a resurgence, along with measles and so many other threats —

— “Shut up!” Someone whispered sternly in my ear. (Oh . . . It  was me.)

The drill was familiar: after the guitar finished, a soft-voiced elder reviewed what was coming: readings of the New Testament nativity story,  and an account of the origin of this custom. And then, as moved, Friends would approach the table as moved, light more candles, perhaps speak, and the room would begin to fill with their glow.

I’m like many these days, feeling that 2024 has been a year of calamities. Politics aside, I’ve lately been under the weight of one that’s minor amid the year’s multitude: the flooding of Swannanoa Valley Friends Meetinghouse in Black Mountain, in western North Carolina. I visited it once, and in Chapel Hill’s half-light, their meeting room looked similar to Swannanoa’s: plain, modest, sturdily utilitarian. In steady use since 2003.

But all Swannanoa’s solidity disappeared in one day, September 27, when Hurricane Helene dumped thirty inches of rain on it. The meetinghouse building still stands, but the structure was ruined by a tidal wave of river water that filled it with toxic mud. The meeting now gathers in other churches, but its institutional future is still very uncertain. (One hundred billion dollars of federal relief funds for the area—not nearly enough, by the way — was bandied about by Congress last week like a badminton shuttlecock: first in the bill to avoid a government shutdown, then cut out, then patched back in.) Will the new administration help or hinder the recovery?

Maybe my concern about Swannanoa is only Quaker tribalism; but for me it’s also emblematic, a physical metaphor for so many other disasters in these months: ruinous wars in the Sudan, Gaza and Ukraine; wildfires, other climate scourges, not to mention political polarization, rising authoritarianism and antisemitism, and—

— “Just be still,” a calmer whisper now. “See the lights. Feel the light. “

It worked, if that’s the right word, at least for the moment. I soon headed home, with a sense of, not exactly hope, but encouragement, or maybe resilience. After all, if this is the remake of a movie we’ve seen before, the first time was tough, but we got through it. So maybe . . . .

. . . Maybe one other platitude can squeak by: it is better too light one candle than to . . . you know.

This is a blog post from Late December, 2017: Below is an array of candles, lit during worship at Chapel Hill Friends meeting in North Carolina, on the night called Christmas Eve, 2017.

I first took part in such a ceremony at State College Friends meeting in Pennsylvania. The event was quite simple; it began after dusk, with the meeting room unlit except for a single candle on a large table, covered with highly reflective aluminum foil.

Out of the silence,  as moved, Friends came to the table in ones or twos or family groups, and each lit another candle, which they placed on the table; they spoke if moved, then sat and re-entered  the silence.

From the first time I experienced it, the way the whole room was progressively illuminated, seemed in fact to glow, as the number of flickering flames increased, was very moving to me.

In a way it was a visible, wordless, yet eloquent evocation of Quakerism at its best: a motley, seemingly haphazard collection of candles of witness, more diverse than we outwardly seem, mainly anonymous and individual, somehow joining together to become more than the sum of the parts.

This time, at the end of 2017, a year which for me has been very heavily shadowed, often deeply gloomy, and yes, dark, the full array became something of an encouraging signal for the year ahead. (Let’s hope!)

At State College Meeting, we were told that this custom had originated in Berlin, shortly after the end of World War Two, when the city was still devastated in the wake of bombing and and combat. I pass on the story we were told it below, knowing it mainly as an oral tradition:

How the Christmas Candlelight Meeting Began

Berlin in 1945 was a devastated city, bombs had destroyed most of the homes and buildings and things were in terrible disarray – children without parents and homes, shortage of food and shelter — all of the terrible consequences that accompany war.

Ilse and Gerhardt were a Quaker couple with three small children who suffered terrible hardships during the war — she (a school teacher) because she defied the authorities ‘speaking truth’ and Gerhardt because he had a Jewish father.

They were homeless and spent many months searching for shelter for their family. While doing so, they were willing to have other homeless orphans join them simply out of compassion, but with the knowledge that with each additional child, there would be less to share among their own family.

They eventually found a bombed-out building that gave them some shelter from the cold winter days and nights. The children slept in Army blankets in the clothes that they wore during the day. Taking turns, Ilse and Gerhardt would search for food to feed the always-hungry children that grew daily in numbers.

Once in returning with a loaf of bread, a hungry soldier asked Ilse for a piece. With reluctance, she shared the bread, only to find upon returning to the children that a Quaker care package had arrived with nuts, dried fruit and chocolates.

On Christmas Eve, Ilse and Gerhardt felt terribly sad about having so little to share with their extended family, but they were determined to make the Eve of Christmas a joyful event for themselves and their children. It was then when they and the Berlin Quaker Meeting conceived of the idea of a candlelight service as we now know it.

By that time, the meeting had been assigned space in a mansion that had been confiscated during the war. Their large room had little furniture and, of course, no Christmas tree. However, nearby was a stand of fir trees and from these, they cut branches and carpeted the floor with green cuttings. They had a good supply of candles and gave one to each child.

The meeting for worship began with a single candle flickering in the darkness of the winter night. One by one, after lighting their candles from each other, the children gave the best and only present that they could — they shared their talents that God had given them.

One little girl had just learned to whistle and tried her best at ‘Joy to the World’. An older child had composed a poem thanking Isle and Gerhardt for their compassion. Many shared memories of their own families, making everyone a bit sad and happy at the same time.

As more children lit their candles, Ilse said the room was turned into a carpet of light (licht teppich in German). After everyone shared their talents, they sang the wonderful Christmas songs that we still sing about God’s gift to us and the hope of Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward everyone.

That sharing became a tradition in the Berlin Quaker meeting that reportedly continues today. Years later, an American family visiting Berlin experienced it while living in Berlin and also introduced it to the Live Oak Friends Meeting in Houston, TX. It has migrated to some other meetings from there.

Previous Quaker Holiday Stories:
#1 A Hospice for Hope

#2 How I got so Lucky

#3 Candles in the Window

**A Quaker Holiday Story Extra: Beethoven In the Basement

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part of a collection of nineteen Quaker short stories, Posies for Peg, which is available here, and on Amazon and Kindle. It makes a fine gift.

Copyright © Chuck Fager