New York City Children’s Chorus Open SNL With ‘Silent Night’: The Right Choice [Video]

Commentary | On a weekend that delivered horrors that are sadly all too imaginable, millions of Americans possibly looked to Saturday Night Live for respite.

Unexpectedly, and wonderfully, before the Martin Short hosted affair got going, SNL’s feed cut to an image of the New York Children’s Choir standing ready, and center stage.

Singing “Silent Night,” at once both painfully appropriate and yet consoling, never before had this seasonal favorite seemed so right.

The 20 children of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, whose lives were violently taken, were being remembered by other children whose lives will hopefully go on — as they should — to fullness.

The last note sounds, the children sign off saying “Live from New York, it’s Saturday night!”and the moment was over.

There will likely be many such moments ahead in the days, weeks, and months to come. There already have been.

Today, Robbie Parker stunned America and the world as he not only remembered his slain six-year-old daughter, Emilie, but honored her an individual who graced his life and returns to her “heavenly father” via brutal means.

Incredibly, Mr. Parker spoke of his dead child as his teacher, unbearably — and perhaps correctly — slipping into present tense at times. Despite his modesty, watching him offer words of comfort to the Lanza family it wasn’t hard to see where Emilie learned the kindness her father saw in her.

Even though Emilie, and 26 more, witnessed the worst of human nature on Friday, somehow we are still moved when we encounter the best of it aren’t we?

So the commentaries pile up and the pundits hold forth, the living ask their questions while the dead speak no more.

That perennial beast, the gun law debate, is now revving up for the conversation of its life as the world looks to a second term President Obama to turn his tears into a “meaningful” revolution.

Yes, on a weekend that saw shootings in an Alabama hospital, a prevented outrage in Oklahoma, random madness in a Southern Californian shopping mall, and the restless ghosts of Aurora, and Columbine — and the rest — rise up once more; the question that demands an answer is: If not now, then when?

Tonight, NYC’s children sang a timeless hymn and it was unquestionably the right choice. When will America’s lawmakers and voters make theirs?

“Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant so tender and mild
Sleep in heavenly peace
Sleep in heavenly peace.”