Christmas Day Thursday, December 25, 2025

On this day when we welcome in spiritual and historical remembrance the birth of Jesus, the air will be filled with music that has delighted ears and touched  hearts for well over a millennium. But I wonder what we who identify as members of the Body of Christ will be listening to and singing on this day of days? White Christmas? Blue Christmas? Have a Holly, Jolly Christmas? Will we be humming any of those anthems celebrating the lesser divinities of our consumer concocted culture: Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and above all other Christmas deities: Santa Claus? After all he did “come to town,” careening his aerodynamically remarkable sleigh over Santa Claus Lane before bringing it and his team of eight cervids to precise Up on the Housetop landings.  The packages under our trees and the cookie crumbs he left behind are hard to otherwise explain, at least to our pre-awakening children.   

But I suspect, when all the presents are unwrapped and the discarded ribbons and paper find their way into our garbage cans, we may yearn for one last spiritual reminder of what our weeks of anticipation and readiness for this day really has meant, or should have meant, to us.  In that spirit I offer three Christmas songs, call them hymns or carols if you prefer, that help us put into perspective what this moment when Christ came into the world, in “the fullness of time,” really tells us about the world, ourselves, and the one we claim to follow.

First I recommend that you listen to this wonderful English anthem for Christmas Day:

On This Day Earth Shall Sing

TEXT: Piae Cantiones (1582), translated by Jane M. Joseph inspired by Luke 2:6-14; Matthew 2:1-12)

TUNE: PERSONENT HODIE, Piae Cantiones (1582), arr. by Gustav Holst (1928)

Recording: https://youtu.be/zZPRMvozqYI?si=dgschK9pFYSjM88L

Often sung as a concert piece by large ensembles supported by orchestral strings and horns, I am always delighted when I find it among the carols intended for congregational singing in church hymnals. While its text and tune reach back into the 1500s, it was given its distinctive form and energy from the twentieth-century composer Jane Joseph. A musical colleague of British giants like Gustav Holst and Ralph Vaughan-Williams, she can be given credit for giving this very old Christian song a new voice for Christian worship in more modern times.

Essentially “On This Day…” is a joyous processional march, retelling some of the details of Luke’s and Matthew’s nativity narratives, complete with cameo mentions of heavenly portents and the fellowship of the animals sharing space with the holy family in the manger. It even includes the later epiphany visit of those wise men bearing their gifts for a king. But what captures us today in hearing and singing this marvelous carol is the theological affirmations that ground us in the significance of the incarnation. For Christ was “born on earth to save us; him the Father gave us….peace and love he gave us.” Each stanza brings us to a stirring affirmation in which we sing “Ideo-0-0, ideo--o-o, ideo, gloria, in excess Deo !” If your Latin is as poor as mine, you will be glad to know what we are proclaiming is nothing less than the song of those heavenly, herald angels: “Because of that fact, therefore: Glory to God in the highest!”

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I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

TEXT: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1863)

TUNE: John Baptiste Calkin (1872)

Recording: https://youtu.be/6qe8MnKD_wo?si=K-vaSvrChhhLJLOa

The second carol I’ve selected for Christmas Day is one that may be more often heard in secular or quasi-spiritual settings than in church, even scoring commercially in recordings by the likes of Bing Crosby, Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, Andy Williams, and the contemporary Christian vocal group, Casting Crowns. I think part of its appeal lies in the honesty and idealism of the text, surprisingly written at Christmas, 1863,  when America’s future was never more in doubt.  Only a month removed from Lincoln’s dedicatory address at the battlefield cemetery in Gettysburg, the renowned American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow spoke of the despair he shared with so many who hoped against hope that Christmas might somehow turn around the hearts, and fortunes of our broken country.

His verses, inspired by the ringing of steeple bells from the churches in his Cambridge, Massachusetts home, reflect the depth of his grief over the hate and warfare that the Civil War had inflamed across his beloved country. While the first three stanzas of his poem expressed his hopefulness of “peace and earth, good-will to men”,   the stark realities of a nation devastated by the horror and destruction of war, steered his hand to write two more confessional verses:

“It was as if an earthquake rent

the heart-stones of a continent,

And made forlorn the households born

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

And in despair I bowed my head; ‘

There is no peace on earth,’ I said; ‘

For hate is strong,

and mocks the song

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Longfellow’s cynicism of the Christmas angel song almost got the better of him.   But then, the poetic conscience of this man, who had already given us memorable verses honoring notable Americans, from Hiawatha to Paul Revere to Evangeline, seemed to steer him back to his faith that God had not abandoned the people of this country.   Neither a dirge nor death knell, the ringing bells of Longfellow’s village  rang out as clarions sending peals of hope through the land.  Hearing afresh their doom-shattering sound, a different message arose in  his heart. It was a message others in his time also needed to hear, just as I’m sure most of us do today, even as we try to find meaning and hope in the present moments of national dysfunction and uncertainty.

“Then pealed the bells more loud and deep;

‘God is not dead, nor doth He sleep.’

The wrong shall fail,

The right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

Could it be that, in writing these words, Longfellow was not creating art as much as dictating words from on high, words echoing what angelic heralds sang to downcast shepherds, a long time ago?

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We Would See Jesus

TEXT: J Edgar Park (1913)

TUNE: CUSHMAN written by Herbert B. Turner (1907)

Recording: https://youtu.be/JPvQChtjJJI

Finally I commend to your hearing this hymn, usually sung well after Christmas.  But for me it is a faith-pointer, so to speak, that directs our gaze from the mysteries and wonder of the birth of Jesus to the life of the person that this same Jesus ultimately became.  Written by theologian and Wheaton College President, J. Edgar Park, this Irish immigrant has given us perhaps the most all-encompassing, yet simple review of Jesus’ life.  Each stanza provide us a summary glimpse of who Jesus was, what he did, and how he transformed the way we have come to know and trust God in following him.

After summarizing his Christmas birth in verse one, the writer then asks of each of us who would really want to see Jesus to fix our gaze and attune our hearts to meeting him again…

“…on the mountain teaching…the blessedness which simple trust has found

“…in his work of healing…in his deep revealing of God made flesh, in loving service met’

“…in the early morning, still as of old he calleth, ‘Follow me!’”

In final stanza Mr. Park invites not only to see Jesus, but to take our commitment one step further:

“Let us arise, all meaner service scorning; Lord, we are thine, we give ourselves to thee.”

If Advent has truly prepared us to make room in our hearts for Emmanuel, “God with us,” then Christmas sets us on our way in giving all that we can offer of ourselves, to being with God.

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