Roy Exum: Christmas Eve, 2016

  • Saturday, December 24, 2016
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

Some people marvel at my recall but the truth is I forget, or cannot remember, so many things. I’ll run into somebody who’ll mention somebody like Kenny Stabler, the great Alabama quarterback, throwing it out of bounds on fourth down in Knoxville – and they’ll remember what I wrote about that day – and I have no idea what they are talking about. Later, when I go back and look it up, I couldn’t swear I wrote that story. It is nutty but the truth. I can’t remember any of the stories I have written.

I’ve talked to the psychiatrists about it … honestly, I can’t remember what I wrote last week! What is equally amazing to me is that there are certain events that are minutely and indelibly imprinted in my mind. Sadly, I cannot remember much about the many years that every December I would spend a week in New York. I headed the Heisman Trophy electors in Tennessee, and was involved in some other sports stuff on the national scale, so I loved going to New York for the Heisman announcement, the network All-American parties and round of lunches and dinners back in the day.

The National Football Foundation Hall of Fame gala at the Waldorf-Astoria was more fun than wrestling monkeys. Every university would be represented and you’d go from one hospitality room to the next all night long, laughing at the stories and the jokes and the merriment. Oh you would get enough column material to fill a train all the way to Atlanta. Mercy me! Then there was walking up Park Avenue in the snow, taking a two-mile run in Central Park, and eating a hot pastrami on rye from a Jewish deli that would choke a grown horse. All heady stuff leading into Christmas.

One day I was with David Housel of Auburn and Roger Valdiserri from Notre Dame, along with one or two more. We’d had a big lunch and towards the end of the meal David reached inside his jacket and fanned a fistful of tickets to the Christmas Show at the Radio City Music Hall. There was a 2:30 matinee and how in the world he had gotten tickets was anybody’s guess. Every year they are impossible to get.

I’d never been to the show – trust me, I’ve been a loyalist every year I’ve been in New York around Christmas (I even saw a camel fall off the stage onto a nun one day!) My first time we ended up in the nose-bleed seats and we were literally surrounded by third and fourth-grade kids. Here are six grown men in a sea of kids. And when the Rockettes came out, all the kids oohed and aahed in a way that the stereo effect surrounding us was magical. I still get goose bumps just remembering it and I was mesmerized.

Towards the end of the show, there was suddenly total blackness with about 20 seconds of kettle drums. You could actually feel the kids holding their breath. And then, Lord almighty, the Christmas story from Luke 2 sprang alive. Real camels and sheep. Incredible costumes. The shepherds. Live donkeys. Until you actually see it you will never fully understand. I promise, it sucks the very breath out of you and with hundreds of kids audibly gasping, I have never lived the manger scene as vividly before or since. Incredible -- it was a once-in-a-lifetime thrill.

Once the wise men were in place, and the shepherds had come from afar, the orchestra played softly as a bold voice began a litany that renders the entire Radio City Music Hall in awe and tears and glory and grandeur at every single performance every single year. Forget ‘political correctness.’ It is Christmas, Christmas indeed. Get the picture, you are looking down at the greatest manger scene since the original, and a strong baritone voice comes over the speakers and in a sure but quiet way you literally get chills as you hear these words…

* * *

ONE SOLITARY LIFE

(This famously taken from a sermon by Rev. James Francis Allen in 1926)

He was born in an obscure village. The child of a peasant woman.

He grew up in another obscure village where he worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty.

He never wrote a book.

He never held an office.

He never went to college.

He never visited a big city.

He never travelled more than two hundred miles from the place where he was born.

He did none of the things usually associated with greatness.

He had no credentials but himself.

He was only thirty three.

His friends ran away.

One of them denied him.

He was turned over to his enemies.

And went through the mockery of a trial.

He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.

While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing.

The only property he had on earth.

When he was dead,

He was laid in a borrowed grave,

Through the pity of a friend.

 

Nineteen centuries have come and gone.

And today Jesus is the central figure of the human race.

And the leader of mankind's progress.

 

All the armies that have ever marched

All the navies that have ever sailed

All the parliaments that have ever sat

All the kings that ever reigned, put together

Have not affected the life of mankind on earth

As powerfully as that One Solitary Life.

* * *

Dr. James Allen Francis (1864–1928) served as Pastor of First Baptist Church of Los Angeles from 1914 to 1928. He wrote a book entitled ‘The Real Jesus and Other Sermons,’ published by Judson Press in 1926. He included a sermon in this book that he had preached to The National Baptist Young Peoples’ Union on July 11, 1926. In that sermon, Dr. Francis summarized the impact of Jesus’ life with a story that has since become known by the title ‘One Solitary Life.’

royexum@aol.com

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