Sometimes words, whether a poem, a lyric or a piece of prose, can touch us immediately upon hearing them and stay with us forever. This happened to me during a Christmas Eve service at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Monmouth County in Lincroft, NJ in 1983. I was serving as the church’s music director, so I was thankful for a break in the many carols, anthems and musical interludes being performed that night when it came time for a unison reading toward the end of the service. The minister at the time, the late Harold R. Dean, led his congregation in a reading of an excerpt from an epilog to a story by William Henry Harrison Murray in his book Christmas in the Adirondacks (1898). As a community we read aloud together… “Ah, friends, dear friends, as years go on and heads get gray, how fast the guest do go! Touch hands, touch hands, with those that stay. Strong hands to weak, old hands to young, around the Christmas board, touch hands.”
The words resonated with me deeply and the reading passed all too quickly. I needed time to process what we had just recited together before rushing into the next musical selection. Luckily there was a period of silence following the reading, which afforded all of us present a moment to reflect and a chance to take hold of the nearest person’s hand.
I recently came across Murray’s full epilog, which he originally wrote as prose, and share it with you in verse form below. What a wonderful blessing or toast to share with friends and loved ones when gathered together this holiday season, especially at a time when our civil discourse appears all but dead and we grow weary battling mutant virus variants that plague our world.
Ah, friends, dear friends, as years go on and heads get gray— how fast the guests do go! Touch hands, touch hands with those that stay. Strong hands to weak, old hands to young, around the Christmas board, touch hands. The false forget, the foe forgive, for every guest will go and every fire burn low and cabin empty stand. Forget, forgive, for who may say that Christmas day may ever come to host or guest again. Touch hands. —William Henry Harrison Murray