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Christmas Muzaking

Nick Suen

Can you remember the last time you heard a good piece of muzak? You know, that tinny, thinly orchestrated melody that hovers like stale air around the ceiling of supermarkets, elevators and shopping malls. Chances are, if it was good, you don’t remember.

Know what makes muzak effective? When you don’t notice it. This is not as easy to do as it sounds. Music is dramatic. Melodies can soar; the accompaniment can be deep or scant; tones can have crests and valleys. Remember Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music spinning with arms and skirt flaring and singing, “Climb every mountain”. Or Celine Dion belting out the theme from Titanic. Or the victory theme from Star Wars when Hans Solo and Luke Skywalker made the procession down the great hall. Dramatic stuff. To muzak a song, you have to restrain the melody, thin out the accompaniment and remove the crests and valleys. Then you hollow it out so it sounds as if it is playing in another room. The end result is muzak that does its job well – by being inconspicuous.

There is nothing more ironic than a muzak version of a Christmas carol – say, “Joy to the World”. Sure, you can argue that Jesus’ arrival on earth was a very quiet, inconspicuous event – but it was hardly mundane. That first Christmas, God entered the world He had created in order to win back His creatures’ hearts. This is high drama. Around the simplicity of a barn animal’s feeding trough, the world held its breath.

There is indescribable joy in this event, because it demonstrates unequivocally that the Creator has not forgotten us. It’s hard to remember this while reading the newspaper. Bad things are a reality – but so are God’s protection, provision and strength in the midst of the bad things. He doesn’t take us out of the bad things, but we have joy because He enters our bad things to walk us through them, and even uses them to iron out the kinks in us. We have joy because a more meaningful existence is now possible. Joy because He is coming back to finish what He started during His first visit. Joy because we finally know that there is someone we matter to, someone who knows what we were put on this planet to do, someone who gives as hope by pointing us to what we have to look forward to. Can you imagine why we would want to muzak this into something that blends into the background?

But we do this. We do this when we fuss more about shopping than worshipping. We do this when we ignore the food bank’s cry for help as we plan the menu for our feasts. We do this every time we moan and groan over our party schedule and to-do list for the month of December. We muzak Christmas every time we forget why Jesus came. He came to win back the world by blessing the unblessed and righting injustices. When we muzak what Jesus is about, we deprive Christmas of its joy, hope and drama.

This doesn’t have to be. In fact, we can make Christmas a year-round event – just by keeping our eyes and ears open to opportunities to bless others. I am not talking about “being nice” but about dramatically extending our hand with peace and good will to the people God points us to.

And while we are at it, I wonder what we can do about that mall music?

Nick Suen is assistant pastor at Bethel Chinese Christian MB Church in Vancouver.

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Last modified December 16, 2002.

© 2002 Mennonite Brethren Herald.
Published by the Canadian Conference of MB Churches.
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