The Drinking Choir Cleans up its Act.

Hello and happy holidays to everyone!

Yes, I say "Happy Holidays."  I celebrate Christmas, but I'm fully aware not everyone on this planet is exactly like me.  (Wow, what a horrible, weird world that would be if everyone was exactly like me...just one long line of angry people at a pharmacy...)  Anyway, so Happy Holidays, and Merry Christmas!

For those of you who celebrate old school, "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" Christmas, you know that the weeks leading up to December 25 are Advent, a time of preparation.  While most churches these days don't really do a lot in the way of special services for Advent, mine does, holding Wednesday services the three weeks prior to Christmas. These are lovely services, the trees are up, and the lights are twinkling, and there's extra pretty music and choir singing.

Which is what brings me to my blog topic this week.

Our church has two adult choirs. The eating choir and the drinking choir. Now, Hubby and I have belonged to both choirs for many years, but recently we scaled back our commitments outside the house a little, and dropped out of the eating choir.  (No pie social for us twice a year!)  Instead, we stuck with the drinking choir, the more contemporary group of singers who, on occasion, gather at each others' homes after choir practice for a little wine drinking. And yes, this group has been known to go to wine tastings and yes, many of the members belong to the "Case Club" at the local winery.

So yes, the drinking choir.

Now, the drinking choir began largely as a summer group, sort  of a fill in choir to be active while the eating choir went on hiatus for the late spring and summer months.  The eating choir did the big holidays, Christmas, Easter, Confirmation, and the Advent song service.  Meanwhile, the drinking choir typically handled the summer outdoor concert.  Hence, when the drinking choir decided they
wanted to get a sort of uniform look, they went with polo shirts.  You know, casual, for those more casual, possibly outdoor, church services.

Over the years the drinking choir has become a year round group, and some members have branched out to long sleeved shirts, and some have even invested in sweaters bearing our choir logo.  (Not me, I am not in a place where I'm wearing a sweater for much of anything.)  Most of us, however, stick with the uniform polo shirts.  Whenever we sing

, the director, a man who takes way more grief from certain members of the choir (Yep, I include myself in that) than he probably should, will tell us if we are wearing our shirts or not.  (To which someone will always say, "Uh, do we have to wear something on the bottom?" or if we aren't wearing our shirts, someone will say, "So it's naked time?"  Because we're eleven.

Now, I'm telling you all this so you can understand my giggle fit at the end of the Advent service this past week.

Our director wanted us to class it up a bit since we were doing three numbers in the Advent service.  We were going to be in the public eye for quite a bit of the service, standing in front there, next to the twinkling trees, and our director, a man I'll call "Ned" wanted us to look less like a bunch of campers from a local group home out for a day at the park and more like grown ups preparing for the birth of our Savior.  Or something like that. I was too busy trying to come up with a snarky comment about dressing up for church to really focus on what he was saying.

Anyway, after practice Tuesday night, Ned announced that we would not be wearing our polo shirts.  And,  before anyone could make the "naked" joke, he added, "I'd like the men in suits and ties and the women in dresses."

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaand the Alto section lose their collective mind.

Well, okay, to be fair, really only three of us in the alto section lost our minds.  Four altos have dresses (that fit) and they are capable of wearing shoes that work with dresses.  The other three of us, however, announced loudly that we were not going to wear dresses.  (I believe, in my frenzy over the very suggestion that I wear something that wasn't pants, I informed the group that this wasn't my mother's funeral and I wasn't wearing a skirt. It's something I generally say to my mother to get her goat.)  Fortunately for the altos, the tenor and bass sections were a bit louder in their protestations about wearing suits and ties.

Had we really become this casual?

So on Wednesday I dug to the very back of my closet and found a skirt that would probably fit and a pair of dress shoes, high heels, that I remember buying several years ago because 1) they were a screaming deal and 2) I figured I'd need high heels at least one more time in my life.  I was ready to GO!

Two things happened, almost at the exact same time.  1) I got an email from the choir director basically backing off of his suit/tie/dress requirement, in fact he intended to wear a zip up sweater with a tie (whereupon I asked if he meant to dress like Mr. Rogers) 2) I put on the high heels.

I remember wearing pumps almost every day as a teen. I mean, it was the 80's. You wore pumps.  Pumps with skirts, pumps with dresses, pumps with knickers, pumps with jeans, pumps with leg warmers.  You just did.  And I wore pumps frequently in college, where I was learning to be a teacher, and then as a teacher I wore pumps...until I realized that first graders are really, really short and pumps made me taller and taking the shoes off was easier than bending.

That's probably about the time I started giving up dress shoes.

At this point, I have a pair of loafers, a pair of boots with no heel, and a couple pairs of sandals when it comes to non sport shoes.  None of those work with a skirt.  so I put on those pumps and hobbled around the house, first to make sure I could still walk in them and also to see if I could wear them without pain.

The answer to both those questions?  NO. No, no, no, no.

I hobbled out of the bedroom, and showed the shoes to Hubby.  "Wow, those are cute!" says he.

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow" says I.

How can the same pair of shoes both pinch and be too loose?

From which ring of hell, which fire of Mordor, which demon possessed clearance aisle at Kohl's did these shoes come?

Well, since Ned mentioned he wasn't going to be wearing a suit, I felt okay slipping into a very dressy pair of flowing...what...pants?  Trousers?  Fancy looking lounge wear?  Hey, they were black, they looked fancy, and they fit.  Footwear was a fun little pair of suede winter booties that I love to pieces and wear all winter long.

Topped the off with some sparkly jewelry and a festive, fabulous red top and I looked AWESOME!

So we got to church, and we all congratulated ourselves on how great we looked. Several of the women opted for the ubiquitous black pant, but the guys, I'm impressed to say, all pulled out suits and ties. 

Now all that of that is only moderately amusing and I'm guessing more than a few of you are sitting there wondering why you're reading about the wardrobe issues of a contemporary church choir.  But here's why I had to write this blog:

At the end of the service, which really went well even though I think a number of us still question the song choices Ned made for the evening, (He's gutsy, that Ned is, he never goes for the safe stuff.) the pastor came down from the altar to make a few announcements.  His first one...and I'm not making this up...was the following:

"So the saints in the choir clean up nicely, don't they?"

WHAT?

Just how out of the norm was it to see us, as a choir, in front of  church wearing, you know, church clothes?  Apparently we've become not only the drinking choir, but the SLOPPY choir.  I mean, if the pastor feels he's gotta make a comment after the service about how good we looked, one of two things is going on:

1)  the congregation really doesn't like the polo shirts and they've complained or

2) we sounded horrible and the pastor just wanted to find something, anything, nice to say about us.

So there's a mystery for everyone to solve.  As for me, I'm fine with the polo shirts.  I'm fine with fancy pants.  Just don't ever again think you're going to get me into a skirt and heels.