Australian Thoughts at the Weekend 12th and 13th December, 2009.

Australian Thoughts at the Weekend 12th and 13th December, 2009.

I think I was about ten when my mother woke me at 4am on Christmas morning. I was to go carolling with the Senior Band commencing as soon as it was light enough to play. I quickly got dressed in my Junior Soldier’s uniform and headed to the breakfast table, wishing mum and dad a sleepy “Merry Christmas” as I arrived.

Dad told me there was a present under the Christmas tree that I should open now. The rest could wait until I got back from carolling, when my brother and sisters were awake. I soon found the reason I was invited to open this particular present. It was a music stand I could use when I played in the band. I remember thinking later if it was not something useful that morning, I would not have opened any presents until I got home in time for Christmas lunch.

In those days, we rode from street to street in the back of a truck. Forms from the hall were tied to the sides of the truck and the bandsmen took their place on the truck in a square formation. Even in that early post dawn hour of Christmas Day, families appeared on the verandas of their homes and on the side of the rode to greet the band. Some of the timbrelists moved from family to family collecting donations and giving out the Christmas issue of the War Cry.

We enjoyed it when the truck driver stopped the truck in the shade under a tree. The bandmaster made comments about the tree muffling the pure sound of the band. To most of us that was only a technical detail as we enjoyed a cool interlude. One hazard we did encounter under some trees were swarms of mosquitoes which made the tree their home. However, a few well placed hits and they were soon dispatched to the next life. At times though, they seemed to be queuing up for their opportunity to be despatched to eternity.

In those early days, we had breakfast about 8am at the Corps Sergeant Major’s home. His wife was recognised as a good cook. We agreed. Now, I can’t remember whether it was while we were eating breakfast or right after that the CSM put on his mantle radio and we listened carefully to the national broadcast by the Melbourne Staff Band. Refreshed and inspired we trekked out to the truck to continue our morning’s carolling.

I had only been a “helping” member of the Senior Band for about 5 years when it became impossible to maintain the Christmas Morning carolling as many bandsmen with their families were away on holidays at the time. A bigger effort was put into the pre-Christmas carolling to make sure as much as possible of our Corps district was covered.

Our family was one of the families that would go away for the Christmas New Year period. It is summer holiday time in Australia. Now as luck or otherwise would have it, we visited my uncle and aunty who were Corps Officers at Southport Corps, on the Gold Coast. Their small band still played carols from dawn on Christmas morning. So, it was into another truck, and off, not this time to residential streets as at home, but to the seaside camping areas where we would play amongst the tents and caravans.

People appeared out of their tents, sometimes still in pyjamas but often in their swimming attire to listen to the band. So throughout the morning, stopping only at a Salvations home where we had breakfast in a large tent in their backyard, we moved on from camping area to camping area right down the Coast.

The morning ended with the band at the Beachcomber Motel, in Surfers Paradise where the bandsmen sat on deck chairs and lounges around the swimming pool. People appeared on the balconies above us and threw coins down to us. Occasionally a note would flutter down. These were the early days of television, and bandsmen were excited to be filmed by the news team for that night’s television news. Excitedly, we would gather in our individual homes around our television sets to see ourselves on the news.

Interestingly, Southport Corps Band is now the Gold Coast Temple Band and I am a regular member of the band. Today, our carolling is not amongst the tents and caravans but mostly in playing at carol singing events and in a shopping centre.

As I think of the early Christmas morning Christmas carols one carol which comes to mind is “Christians Awake”. I remember one Corps where two friends of mine along with other bandsman got tired year after year of the Bandmaster saying he had not missed a Christmas morning carolling in all the many years he had been a bandsman. Looking accusingly at others, he would always add not only was he never late but he was always first there ready to play.

In a casual conversation they found out what time the bandmaster set his alarm for. However, with the cooperation of the rest of the band, they arrived outside his home, and just before the Bandmaster’s alarm went off, they played “Christians Awake!” He laughed as he came out to the band but his bandsmen knew him well enough to know he was not happy.

It was a small corps band faithfully playing Christmas carols in my wife’s neighbourhood that reminded her of the babe of Bethlehem. It reminded her, too, of days spent at Sunday School at the Corps. She went back to the Corps and eventually became a Soldier and Local Officer. She left the Corps for the Training College. Today, she serves the Lord quietly, in a ministry of encouragement and prayer.

1 Corinthians 13:1 (New King James Version)
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.

1 Corinthians 13:1 (New International Version)
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal

1 Corinthians 13:1 (The Message)
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

My prayer is that the playing of our bands will be more than sounding brass, a gong, or the creaking of a rusty gate to the families we encounter.


The Band Lad

At eight I was in the Young People’s Band
All said in my band uniform I looked grand
Then I first played carols from a printed card
And my 2nd Baritone part seemed very hard
It seemed I had to play notes without reason
But this was my part in the Christmas Season
My mates on 1st Cornet seemed to have it made
As there was some tunes in what they played.

One day the YP Band Leader came to me
He said today in the Senior Band you will be
The Bandmaster wants a few more players
He said not outstanding stars but stayers
Who will benefit from the experience
When they play in the band in years hence
So with the seniors in the band I played
And a life’s banding foundation was laid.

Christmas carolling here came with summer’s heat
It seemed that some of winter’s snow would be neat
It was hot and we dripped with perspiration
As we played our Christmas season’s exultation.
A solo cornet player in sucking for air inhaled a fly
He coughed and spluttered as if he was about to die
The bandsmen all around him struggled to play on
They couldn’t for laughing until he said it was gone.

The bandsmen between carols told a story or three
And the old days brought amusement to a kid like me
Some told of days before they went to fight the war
Incidents from before I was born certainly did not bore
They held my interest as they told of other days
And how as bandsmen they carolled in other ways.
One told of playing carols in the very cold snows
When the rain froze in icicles on his cornet and nose.

Many years have passed since when carolling we marched
From street to street in the heat with tongues parched
My playing of carols has proclaimed the Saviour’s birth
And now my recounting those past days brings joy and mirth
I have played my carols on cornet, horn, tuba and trombone
But after trying euphonium I am back where I began on baritone
I played in prisons and hospitals, parks, churches and halls
On radio, and television and now I play in beachside malls.

It might be for some ice and snow and for us here flies and heat
But Christmas carolling as a Salvo bandsman you can’t beat.
It brings a sound of joy to a busy and wonderful season
With a message God’s love for us was the only reason:
That God sent his son Jesus to live on earth among us
And it is Jesus birth that we celebrate with all this fuss.
So as Salvo bandsmen we play carols wherever we are able
To tell of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem’s humble stable.
Ray Reese
Written: Christmas 2005

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