The Sound of Christmas

Think of the most beautiful sound you ever heard. I bet it was the sound of a child singing at Christmas time (or holiday of your religion).

The video above of children singing Christmas Canon for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra is a moving sound. It echoes into the heart and soul as their voices lift. Multiple sounds come from every direction to create a pleasant feeling inside.

Then it’s over. The song is done, the singing at an end.

And so it goes.

The beautiful and the vile all come to an end. But it’s the beauty that sticks to the soul and lingers; a song you can’t get out of your head.

We believe there is always another day to hear the sound again. We know when the sound is broadcast it also races into the depths of space at the speed of light. However unlikely, there is a chance a faraway species might someday pick up the broadcast and hear the beautiful sound for the first time.

We believe. But there are no guarantees. On day the sound will end forever.

One day the last child will gently murmur a joyous noise before it stops without hope beginning again. As with all things, it will end.

The end of such an incredible voice is impossible to understand by mere mortals. How can the children stop singing?

But it will happen; we all know it!

Maybe we destroy ourselves in a fit of rage, misunderstanding or ignorance. Maybe nature brings the Anthropocene to an end in a terrorist haste as it did the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Maybe we avoid those fates to await the aging of our sun as it expands, boiling the surface of Earth sterile.

Regardless our fate, the sound of beauty will end. We can take solace knowing electromagnetic waves carry the voices of our children deep into the ether. That is until the universe expands so much that the message is diffused so thin no technology can ever recover what once was.

And maybe there is nobody to listen. Or nobody able to hear.

Someday the music will end as all things do. A beauty so great it moved a people, will cease to exist.

The day may come tomorrow, in a hundred years or eons in the future.

But not today. Today we hear a sound. A sound of Christmas. A sound of beauty. A sound of children singing.

It’s the most beautiful sound ever heard anywhere in the vast universe and we are fortunate to live in a time and place where it is possible to experience the joy.

We must listen to the incredible sound; we must recognize out great fortune for someday it will be part of history as it evaporates into the emptiness of space.

But not now. Not today. Today we can hear the sound.

We are the few, the blessed. Never forget how fortune has smiled on you.

Merry Christmas, kind readers.