I help out with music for my church and the other day I was looking over some traditional Christmas carols in preparation for a special service we were holding.
One caught my eye: “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.”
We’ve probably all heard it, even if we haven’t spent much time in church.
I’ve noticed that there is a fairly distinct emphasis on peace in this song. Also, it doesn’t even mention Jesus Christ, who – last I checked, is still the focus of the Christian celebration of Christmas. However, it very clearly celebrates the occasion of his birth.
Curious, I decided to do a little research.
Turns out it was written by Edmund Sears, a Unitarian minister, in 1849, a time when tensions were heating up toward what ultimately resulted in the Civil War.
Though the Unitarian movement was known for its dismissal of the historic Christian belief in a Trinitarian God (one God, three persons), Sears apparently didn’t follow the party line, once stating: “Although I was educated in the Unitarian denomination, I believe and preach the Divinity of Christ.”
I mention that because the intent of his Christmas carol apparently wasn’t a doctrinal diversion. But it was a message of hope in an increasingly divisive world.
My point is probably becoming obvious, so I’ll move right along: Things aren’t that different in the United States, for many, than they were in the mid-1800s. People didn’t agree then and they don’t now, even to the point of occasional violence.
In particular, we’ve just come through a distinctly, unpleasantly divisive presidential election. We’re surrounded by problems, domestic as well as international.
That’s something like what Sears was experiencing when he wrote this.
Thus, it could be encouraging to slow it down for minute and take a close read of this carol’s lyrics – particularly the third verse, which generally isn’t sung today.
So here it is:
It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth,
To touch their harps of gold:
“Peace on the earth, goodwill to men,
From heaven’s all-gracious King.”
The world in solemn stillness lay,
To hear the angels sing.
Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled,
And still their heavenly music floats
O’er all the weary world;
Above its sad and lowly plains,
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o’er its babel sounds
The blessed angels sing.
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has 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 noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.
And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing!
For lo! the days are hastening on,
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the age of gold;
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.
May you find peace this Christmas and have a very blessed celebration.