I'm Sure My Dad's Singing Along

One of my fondest memories of Christmas Eve is singing “Angels We Have Heard on High” alongside my father when I was about nine years old. Dad was a shy man, so he normally would sing hymns very softly. On this night, though, he sang it full bore, off-key, and with the deepest yearning that I had ever heard in him. Dad was drunk that night.

He was a melancholic, battered man, a World War II army veteran who saw many of his friends blown to bits. He sought refuge in alcohol, which made life pretty frightening for Mom, my older brother, Randy, and me. But in church I saw the gentle Cajun who grew up Catholic and who still feared God.

Only a few years after this Christmas Eve Service, my brother became a Jesus freak. Dad began reading the Bible to help my brother realize how far he had stepped off the deep end into religious extremism. Within a year Dad realized that my brother had found a relationship with Jesus that Dad had not discovered. So Dad surrendered to Jesus.

Then his drinking simply stopped. He still struggled with anger. We still argued about the length of my hair, my failure to practice the piano, and my halfhearted efforts at homework. Still, I began associating Dad more with love than with fear.

I spent nearly every Christmas with Dad until his death in 1992. We sang “Angels We Have Heard on High” together many times, but somehow my keenest memory is of Dad singing it with such yearning. Now, when I sing this carol, I know a small measure of the yearning Dad felt when I was a boy. I close my eyes and imagine Dad in heaven, singing along at the top of his redeemed lungs, feeling drunk on his adoration for God.

 — Douglas LeBlanc, Chesterfield, Virginia