ADELAIDE’S CHRISTMAS CAROL

ADELAIDE’S CHRISTMAS CAROL

By

Bob Flicker

2017

 

The mountain top village was, for the past two years, empty of people or so it seemed. The wind blew in powerful gusts driving the snow through the broken windows and doors that swung with the wind in the wrecks of what were once shanties more than they were houses. When the small coalmine closed the miners and their families went away forever.


The miserable, battered church with it’s broken steeple stood apart from the houses on a small rise appearing to beckon to parishioners, no longer there, to come and welcome the coming of Christmas. The church was empty, filled only with biting cold and the seeping, wind-driven snow.


The minister left with all the others leaving the wreck of his church to whatever fate and God would have in store for it.


 

Adelaide had never left the village owing to the fact she was both deaf and crippled. She had lived with her mother and father until he was killed in a mine accident. Adelaide’s mother had considered her daughter to be a burden and left with the other villagers, leaving her deaf and crippled, sixteen-year old daughter behind to fend for herself.

 

The church had an electric organ. It wasn’t much of an organ. No pipes. It didn’t matter that it had no pipes since it had been broken for years and didn’t play. Even if it did work there was nobody who knew how to play it after fat Mrs. Macon died. She only knew three notes, B, D and F sharp. The fact that there was no electricity made even a healthy organ impossible to play. None of those things mattered to Adelaide who could play and hear the organ in her head.

 

Adelaide loved the organ and played it during the nights after everyone was asleep. These past two years had been a time of joy even with the village empty of people. She had composed the words and music for a grand Christmas carol. Tonight, on Christmas Eve, she believed, they would all return and fill the pews of the church and hear her Christmas carol... Adelaide’s Christmas Carol.

 

It was a forest ranger that, on Christmas morning, found her lifeless body slumped over the small organ. There was a smile on her face.

 

Bob Flicker

awritersghosts.com

 

EPILOGUE

 

Will ADELAIDE’S CHRISTMAS CAROL, her Christmas gift to God, ever be heard by all of us? How would that be possible, you might ask. The answer, I believe, lies with a composer who is truly moved by his or her heavenly inspired revelation.

 

Where and when will that be? I do not know. Inspiration from God is received by only a privileged, deserving few. Who that person or persons may be, God only knows. Not until then will all the rest of us be fortunate enough to hear ... ADELAIDE’S CHRISTMAS CAROL.

 

Merry Christmas,

Bob Flicker

 

 © robert 2014