For many, like my wife, Christmas is the best time of the year. My opinion doesn’t rise to best, but the Christmas season is up there for me. More than nostalgia and family, lights and gifts, I love Christmas music and have since my youngest days when my debut vocal performance included All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth as a second grader at Balmoral Elementary School.
I loved singing Silver Bells in my high school choir and playing Sleigh Ride in my high school band. I hope to sing again Handel’s Messiah in a large choir with orchestral accompaniment like I did as a student at Bob Jones University. Now, every Advent Sunday brings great anticipation for me as our church sings together Christmas hymns.
Christmas hymns are a curious part of our Christian singing. Over the course of a calendar year, we sing them only for a few weeks but quickly recover both the text and tune. Writers penned many of our Christmas carols during the 1800s using the language and imagery of the Victorian Era. As a result, many of our Christian hymns have slid into the realm of folk music and do not deliver to us the same impact it did nearly two hundred years ago. It Came Upon a Midnight Clear is an example.
American Edmund Sears began writing hymn texts at age 24, soon after his ordination in the Unitarian Church. His Unitarian doctrine is a problem, and that’s why the hymn does not include any mention of Christ or the reason for the babe in the manger, but let’s move past that for today.
When Sears wrote, the United States was at the brink of Civil War and explains the repeated call to embrace the angelic message of “Peace on Earth, good-will to men.” Sears’s heavy heart for the troubles of his day appears in a verse not in our church hymnal and omitted from most hymnals.
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world hath suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love song which they bring;
O hush the voice, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing!
Now at the close of 2022 and nearly 175 years after the writing of this Christmas hymn, I find these days disheartening and discouraging. I cringe at the violence in our culture. I am saddened by the condition of our education system and what it produces and fails to produce in our children, a reality that can only lead to the decline of a once great people. I am angered by a government that upholds abortion on demand and thumbs its nose at the Creator’s design for marriage.
And then I gather with God’s people and sing our Christmas songs, many of which take us through the course of the incarnation to our Lord’s exaltation and ultimately our unification with him, and my heart is encouraged that Christ came and Christ is coming again. And by singing, I am encouraged to live today faithfully for our Lord (Colossians 3:16).
So, sing, Christians! Sing our folksy and glorious carols and be refreshed by the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.
As always, I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.