I listen to Bach’s “Weihnachtsoratorium”/Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248) every year. I play it specifically on December 24th when my kids, my wife and I do the decorations. I don’t even like the Christmas Oratorio that much. But at least my wife knows why I excuse myself at times.

When I was little, on the evening of Dec 24th, we used do decorate the Christmas tree and my parents were adamant on playing the Christmas Oratorio at full volume when we did so. None of us are/were religious in any way, quite the contrary, but both of them were huge classical music fans. Especially my father used to be a massive Bach fanboy.

As a child who grew up learning to sing and to play several instruments, I hated this thing of theirs with a passion. I couldn’t stand this music genre. It was so far removed from what I liked and what life entailed for me; it was the sound of getting me the fuck away from home. I couldn’t deny it was a part of me, but it was a part that I despised.

Then, when I was in my early 20s, my Dad came down with aggressive cancer. After his last Christmas, we tried one last therapy which the doctors admitted was kind of experimental because the medication hadn’t been tried on patients with cancer of that type or that far advanced.

We don’t know what exactly happened. But this dear man, who had collected several dozen CDs of his favorite versions of Bach’s pieces, who had been searching and saving for rare editions just to get all the “right” recordings, he suddenly… didn’t understand his favorite music. And if you know baroque music - it takes some understanding to fully appreciate it.

He just didn’t get it anymore. Something in his brain got rewired during those last few months. “They’re playing it wrong!” he shouted angrily. It didn’t matter that this was the same CD he had listened to for ten years. My sister tried singing folk songs with him - which he used to enjoy - and while he himself sang pitch-perfect, he was perfectly sure that “nothing was right”. Have you ever seen a bed-ridden person go beserk? He winced when he turned, but he was infuriated. Eventually, we all gave up. There was no saving his love for music, it just… up and left him. One of the things which used to define him as a person was simply gone. All joy for any of it, evaporated, poof, without a trace. Cancer finally broke him, broke us. We buried him a few weeks later.

This one, minuscule, thing that he had saved to enjoy when he was old… he couldn’t. A part of what my father was, in the matter of a few days, just vanished. There was little left for and left of him. I can’t blame him for leaving before saying goodbye.

But I will never forgive the god I had never believed in for taking that last bit of joy away from a dying man.

Verily: “Jauchzet, frohlocket! Auf, preiset die Tage! Rühmet, was heute der Höchste getan!”