Around much of the world people are gearing up to celebrate Christmas on December 25th. Traditionally a time of feasting and present giving, it is also a time for communicating – conveying our affection for friends and family via cards and proclaiming the narrative behind the celebration through carols. Hark the Herald Angels Sing and O Come All ye Faithful are just two well-known examples of a story which has inspired creators of songs, poems and stories for centuries.
The accounts of Christmas carols focus on the Christian belief that a baby born two millennia ago, to a teenage girl who had never had sexual intercourse, was actually God himself entering human life, as had long been promised through the Jewish scriptures. Thirty-three years later, the now grown baby boy was falsely imprisoned and killed, taking on his shoulders the weight of all human wrong-doing.
A costly gift
Many carols inhabit the uneasy space between the awe inspired by the birth of Jesus, believed by Christians to be the Son of God, and the world’s rejection of him later. Like all Christmas literature, they are full of iconography and allusions to the biblical texts (and later traditions) which inspired them. Yet today, much of that iconography is unfamiliar to us.
For example, here is the first verse of a carol written in the last twenty years by Thomas Hewitt Jones and Timothy Dudley Smith. But what exactly does it mean?
‘CHILD OF THE STABLE'S SECRET BIRTH,
According to Luke 2:7, Jesus was born in a stable where the animals would have been kept, because an influx of travellers to Bethlehem meant that there was no other accommodation available. His family was poor and his birth unheralded by any people of worldly importance (hence ‘secret’).
THE LORD BY RIGHT OF THE LORDS OF EARTH,
The poverty and humble circumstances of his birth is contrasted with the Christian belief that Jesus’ prior status had been as co-ruler of heaven, to whom all earthly powers were subject, something Paul writes about in Philippians 2:6-7.
LET ANGELS SING OF A KING NEW-BORN,
In Luke 2:10-14 shepherds witness divine messengers who proclaim that the Christ (a term for the Annointed One of God) has arrived, and is to be regarded as Lord.
THE WORLD IS WEAVING A CROWN OF THORN:
Yet the advent of God on earth is not understood by most, according to John 1:10. Despite being a heavenly king, the only recorded crown Jesus wore on earth was the one made as a contemptuous jibe by Roman soldiers prior to his execution Matthew 27:28-9.
A CROWN OF THORN FOR THAT INFANT HEAD
Again the carol contrasts the brutal fate awaiting the adult Jesus with his innocent beginnings. We associate babies with vulnerability, with downy hair and soft skin, to be protected from – rather than exposed to – harsh treatment.
CRADLED SOFT IN THE MANGER BED.’
That Jesus’ first bed was merely the trough from which animals ate is mentioned three times in the original account (Luke 2:7-16). The carol’s first verse thus emphasises the belief that the ‘highest of the high’ arrived on earth as ‘the lowest of the low’. Yet the little baby is ‘cradled’ softly within the straw, perhaps indicating that the natural world recognised and protected him even if the human one ultimately did not (a tradition that was fleshed out in medieval times and is alluded to in Hardy’s Christmas poem The Oxen).
There’s so much in it!
Only six short lines but all that background, which of course the carol composers assume their audience understand! That’s why www.crossref-it.info exists, to give you a quick way of accessing the writer’s intentions and the context of reception which any study of literature demands.
But meanwhile, don’t lose sight of the beauty of the text. There are four other verses to this carol, which also has a haunting melody. For a taste of the original, go to http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780193367449.do and click on the mp3 clip under ‘Resources’.
And of course, here’s hoping you have a HAPPY CHRISTMAS!
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