Grace Episcopal Church
photo by John Shearer
After more than 30 years, one local Christmas and Advent tradition has ended – the Bach’s Lunch Friday music program at Grace Episcopal Church.
Since 1981, the church has presented a lunch and concert in its nave on three subsequent Fridays before Christmas, but it decided not to offer the series this year.
According to Grace staff member Dabney Carden, such factors as lower attendance in recent years and other similar Advent music program alternatives in Chattanooga resulted in its cancellation this year.
However, she did say the church presented a special Sunday music program this year as one way to continue celebrating church seasonal music during Advent.
I actually found out about the cancellation while working on another upcoming story related to Grace Episcopal Church.
As one who had been to a number of the Bach’s Lunch programs since they began, I am certainly sorry to hear about the cancellation and hope they are brought back in the near future.
Even though I have never been a member of the church, I hardly ever missed the programs for a period of maybe 15 or more years in the 1980s and 1990s.
My mother, Velma Shearer, found out about the programs, perhaps through a newspaper article, and I started going with her when I was home from the University of Georgia probably about the first year they started.
She liked such events and I was glad to tag along, particularly because a lunch was involved.
I also loved the creative concept of enjoying a box lunch while listening to a string quartet, a choir, a soloist, an organist or other musicians perform Bach Advent music or other mostly classical pieces of the season.
Whoever coined the term Bach’s Lunch to imply box lunch as well as Bach music was genius.
While I sometimes wished the lunchbox contained larger helpings of such homemade delicacies as soups, salads, sandwiches, quiches and finger desserts – along with great spiced tea – I still loved the food and heartily ate away. I think I enjoyed eating out of the box much better than during some of the later visits, when the meal was served sit-down style in the church’s gathering hall after the music.
And besides food, I also was heartily nourished with the spiritual and musical offerings. The “high church” style of music presented during the programs was probably on the far end of the Christian music spectrum from that shown on a Mull’s Singing Convention TV show, and I loved it.
I think my mother had somehow cultured me by getting me to go with her.
And the handsome church on the aesthetically pleasing lawn full of trees at Brainerd Road and Belvoir Avenue enhanced the experience even more.
Even after I graduated from college, we continued to attend. My Friday workdays at the Chattanooga Free Press when I worked there in the 1980s and 1990s would often be over by noon, so I was able to head over to Brainerd to enjoy the luncheon program with my mother most of the Fridays it was offered.
And after Laura and I were married in 1994, I often went with her as well.
One time I particularly remember going was during the Advent season of 1983. I was working at the Chattanooga Golf and Country Club after graduating from Georgia the previous summer, and I was wondering if I would ever be able to find a professional job.
I did not realize I was just a few months away from being hired at the Chattanooga Free Press and would indeed get to start enjoying professional fulfillment as a writer and reporter.
As a result, the Bach’s Lunch program on one of those Fridays that year was to offer me a nice respite from the anxiousness about finding a job to support myself.
I waited around for my mother like I normally did outside the church that day, but she did not come. Finally, I decided I better get my box lunch and hot spiced tea and head inside to hear the music shortly after it started. Wondering about where Mama was made me enjoy the program a little less than I normally did.
Mama never came, so when I went over to the club to work, I called her. She was OK, but had somehow locked her keys in her car.
I thought about that in recent weeks. Although I live up the road in Knoxville now and admittedly have not been to a Bach’s Lunch program in the last five or six years, I wanted to try to go this year during one of my regular visits to Chattanooga to see my father, Wayne Shearer.
The reason was that my mother died in June, and I desired to go as a tribute to her and to remember the good times we used to have.
I did at least stop by Grace Episcopal Church to work on a story about another topic late last Friday morning. It was about the time that the Bach’s Lunch would normally be getting ready to start, and as I was leaving, I saw an acquaintance walking up the sidewalk to the nave.
She was coming to hear a Bach’s Lunch program, not knowing the church was not having it this year.
Like me, she was a little disappointed to learn they were not having it and said something like, “They always have it.”
Here’s to the great memories of the Bach’s Lunch programs, and may they be brought back again next year for sentimental people like me!
Jcshearer2@comcast.net