Congratulations on providing music for some of the holiest days of the year in our church calendar. We hope you had another successful Christmas Eve/Christmas Day celebration, as well as the Feast of the Holy Family. If you’re anything like me, you haven’t quite fully recovered yet: the onslaught of family events, social events and weekend Masses may still have you in a fog. (At least, they do to me!)

That’s why today we’re hearkening back to the “Best of…” episode for 2019. We polled and looked at what was the most popular episode of the year. It was a close one, but the “Best Of…” episode is…..Episode 25: “The Singing Priest”, featuring Ricky Manalo!

It’s almost here. We’re T-minus 24 hours until the Christmas Eve/Christmas Day marathon for so many of us. The instruments are tuned. The binders are prepared. The choirs have learned their music…for the most part. And the preludes & postludes have been practiced.

What’s left to do, except most possibly…everything?

Today we invite you to take a few minutes and listen to a great podcast episode as you write out Christmas cards for all of your pastoral musicians. Today on the podcast we have the privilege of interviewing John Romeri, Director of Music for Christ Cathedral in the Diocese of Orange, California.  

If you are “in the trenches” in music ministry, you know that this week can be, in some ways, tougher than Christmas week itself. It’s the last week before Christmas, and you might be making last minute binders for your trumpet players….as you get an email from your chorister that says they have the flu, and won’t be making the last choir rehearsal before Christmas. At the same time, you must prepare music of your own! One year I sat down to play the 4 pm Mass on Christmas Eve and as I began to play the prelude, I realized that I never prepared a binder of music for myself.

Not only do we need to prepare binders, but we need to prepare multiple prelude and postlude selections….while still wrapping gifts and preparing for the non-liturgical part of the holiday itself.

How do we stay afloat?  What can we do in a jam-packed week such as this?