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No Room At The Hotel
“Yeah, that one’ll do,” said my older brother. He yanked on a chord and the chain saw whirred and sputtered into action. He bent over and cut down our Christmas tree for the year and we dragged it home.
Ah, the smell of pine as we began our yearly traditions in the Rainey home in Cleveland, Arkansas. Later, there will also be delicious smells of fresh juicy oranges and big red apples. Every year, a big box of each would appear from under our parent’s bed, a couple of days after the smells filled the house. Each child would receive one of each in a paper bag along with other goodies like a big peppermint stick and an assortment of nuts and other candies. And of course, this would not be the only bag of goodies cherished during this joyous season. We would also receive a very similar bag of goodies from each of the three churches in the community; that is, if you went to their Christmas program.
New Prospect Baptist Church’s yearly Christmas program! That brought with it lots of anticipation and a little anxiety. Every year I had a “speech”! The older I got, the longer my speech! I always looked forward to our program of children and teens walking up before the congregation to recite their speech. There would be a plenty of “help Lord”, “take your time baby” or “that’s all right, you can do it” from the adults whenever a speech seemed to have an unplanned, longer than necessary pause. Usually, an A & B selection, given by the guest churches (the other two churches in the community), would be intermingled among the speeches. After all the “speeches” had been given, play completed (if there was one), and the guest had sang their songs, The New Prospect Baptist Church adult choir would close the program withNo Room At The Hotel.
I love that song for many reasons! One being that it is wrapped in so many fond childhood memories for me at Christmas time; the other, my daddy was the star of the song! As they sang the a Capella tune, he was singing bass like nobody business with his “boom, boom boom, boom boom, boom boom”……….. I waited with bright eyed excitement and clapped my hands and stomped my feet along with everyone else as they sang with my daddy; an incredible instrument played by the Holy Spirit!
Take a listen. It’s a song about Mary finding no room at the hotel when it was time for Jesus to be born.
Today’s story is by Dena Nash, and her favorite Christmas song is below.
Dena Nash leads worship at Fellowship North and is married to Harold; they have 2 grown daughters. She grew up in the small town of Cleveland, AR, and loves music and playing games (she has a competitive streak!).