I would dare say if you ask alumni of Boston how they would characterize our college community, most of them would use the word “family.” This college has a remarkable sense of community, and that’s one of the reasons that, even though we are a small college, most of our students have more friends than the average college student. We have a sense of togetherness that is extraordinary. And the holiday season illustrates that even more visibly.
Our Christmas tradition is gathering our college family at Boston’s historic Old North Church for a candlelit service of music and Scripture readings in one of the most famous old church buildings in the country. Add a stroll in Boston’s North End, and maybe a stop at Mike’s Pastries, and you have a Christmas tradition fit for any family!
But Boston’s family holidays start in the Thanksgiving season, even before the famous feast. We have a Thanksgiving chapel that I think most of our alumni and students would say is their favorite of the year. It’s ridiculously simple. We read Psalms of thanksgiving. We pray communal prayers of thanks for what Jesus has done – to change us from what we were, to this family of brothers and sisters. And then we thank the Lord for each other. I always quote my late friend Bill Lane, who liked to say, “When God gives a gift, He usually wraps it up in a person!” The Boston way to say thanks is to write your specific appreciation for someone on a little white sticker, and then stick it on them at the close of our Thanksgiving chapel. It’s hilarious, emotional, moving, and fun at all once. Everybody leaves covered in stickers of thanks. And I don’t think any of those stickers ever gets thrown away. I keep mine in a secret stash in the cover pages of my Bible. It’s the love evidence of my Boston family.