Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.
—Isaiah 60:1
But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.
—Malachi 4:2a
LOOK: Christ as Sol Invictus, Early Christian mosaic
Christ as Sol Invictus, late 3rd or early 4th century. Mosaic from the Tomb of the Julii (Mausoleum “M”), Vatican Necropolis, under St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome. Photo: Tyler Bell.
This ceiling mosaic from an ancient Roman mausoleum built for one Julius Tarpeianus and his family contains an extraordinary depiction of Jesus Christ modeled after the sun-god Sol Invictus, who was sometimes identified with Helios, Apollo, or Mithras. It’s one of many surviving examples of how the early Christians appropriated pagan iconography for their own use, communicating the sacred stories and truths of the new faith—in this case, Jesus as the light of the world.
Buried beneath St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, the mausoleum was first discovered in 1574 when a workman conducting floor alterations on the cathedral accidentally broke through. A larger hole was then drilled to gain access, which is why this mosaic on its vault is partially destroyed.
The mosaic shows a male figure wearing a radial crown and wheeling through the sky in a quadriga (four-horse chariot)—though just two of the horses survive. He holds an orb, symbolic of his dominion over the earth, and is dressed in a tunic and a windswept cloak. His other hand, missing due to the damage, may have been making a blessing gesture. He sends forth rays in all directions, lighting up the sky with a golden sheen. Grapevine tendrils unfurl all around him, symbolic of life and especially the life-giving Eucharist.
Most scholars identify the image as Christian and read the figure on the sun-wagon as Christ, though this is debated. Other images in the mausoleum are of a fisherman, a shepherd, and a man being swallowed by a sea-monster (e.g., Jonah)—all of which appear in both pagan and Christian funerary contexts in that era.
That December 25 was the birthday of Sol Invictus (and Mithras, a Persian sun-god whose cult gained popularity in Rome in the third century) likely factored into the church choosing that date for the annual celebration of Jesus’s birth. In his book Living the Christian Year: Time to Inhabit the Story of God, Bobby Gross, the vice president for graduate and faculty ministries for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, writes,
Worship of the sun has a long history in ancient cultures. The Roman emperor Aurelian, who apparently wanted to unite the empire around a common religion, instituted the cult of Sol Invictus, the “Unconquered Sun,” in 274 and declared the day of the winter solstice, December 25, as the birthday and feast of the sun-god. [The official date of the winter solstice in the Roman Empire would change to December 21 when the Council of Nicaea adjusted the Julian calendar in 325.] The earliest evidence of Christians in Rome celebrating Christ’s nativity on December 25 appears later in 336. Many scholars conclude that the church purposefully countered the pagan festival by adopting its date for their celebration of the birth of “the sun of righteousness” (Mal. 4:2). This cultural appropriation became an implicit witness to the truly unconquerable light. (66–67)
Other scholars argue that December 25 was chosen because the Feast of the Annunciation—celebrating the miraculous conception of Christ in Mary’s womb—had already been fixed on March 25, the spring equinox, and if you count forward nine months (the average human gestation period), you land on December 25.
These two theories of the dating of Christmas are not mutually exclusive. Christ’s birth was and is celebrated in Rome as a festival of light, so it makes sense that Christians there would mark that birth on the date when the daylight hours first start to grow longer. (Just as it makes sense that his conception was placed in springtime, reflecting the flowering of new life.) Jesus came to us in the depths of our darkness, bringing light. The winter solstice is not an intrinsically pagan event—it’s a natural one, which religions of all kinds find meaning in, not to mention the practicality in ancient societies of marking time by the courses of the sun and the moon.
Many of the church fathers wrote about Jesus as light-bringer and as Light itself. In chapter 11 of his Protrepticus pros Hellenas (Exhortation to the Greeks), written around 200 CE, Clement of Alexandria glories in the light of Christ that extends over all of creation, banishing the darkness. The chapter is editorially titled “How great are the benefits conferred on humanity through the advent of Christ”:
Hail, O light! For in us, buried in darkness, shut up in the shadow of death, light has shone forth from heaven, purer than the sun, sweeter than life here below. That light is eternal life; and whatever partakes of it lives. But night fears the light, and hiding itself in terror, gives place to the day of the Lord. Sleepless light is now over all, and sunset has turned into dawn. This is the meaning of the new creation; for the Sun of Righteousness, who drives his chariot over all, pervades equally all humanity, like his Father, who makes his sun to rise on everyone, and distills on them the dew of the truth. (translated from the Greek by William Wilson, adapt.; emphasis mine)
In chapter 9 of the same work, Clement expounds on Ephesians 5:14, writing, “Awake, he says, you that sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light—Christ, the Sun of the Resurrection, he who was born before the morning star, and with his beams bestows life.”
Similarly, Ambrose of Milan refers to Christ as “the true sun” in his Latin hymn “Splendor paternae gloriae,” written in the second half of the fourth century:
O splendor of God’s glory bright, O Thou that bringest light from light, O Light of Light, light’s Living Spring, O Day, all days illumining.
O Thou true Sun, on us Thy glance let fall in royal radiance, the Spirit’s sanctifying beam upon our earthly senses stream.
Morn in her rosy car is borne: let Him come forth our Perfect Morn, the Word in God the Father One, the Father perfect in the Son. Amen.
Trans. Robert Bridges
Some Christians may feel uncomfortable with Christ’s being made to resemble a pagan deity in the Vatican Necropolis mosaic, or with the suggestion that the church saw fit to celebrate Christ’s birth on the same day Sol Invictus, the “Invincible Sun,” was said to be born. As for myself, I feel no such qualms. Just as the apostle Paul affirmatively quoted the pagan poets Epimenides and Aratus in his Areopagus sermon to reveal the truth of Christ (Acts 17:28), so too can we recognize connection points between our own faith tradition and others, which often reveal common yearnings we share—for example, for light that the darkness cannot overcome.
It’s then for us to articulate what makes Christ, who is such a light, distinct from those who came before and after. He is true God and true man, born miraculously of a virgin in first-century Judaea. He knows our sorrows intimately, because he was one of us—he made himself vulnerable. He taught people how to live as citizens of the kingdom of heaven. For that he was crucified, but he conquered death, rising from the grave and ascending to the right hand of the Father, where he lives and intercedes for us. He will come again to restore us to our true home. This, the story of Christ, is what C. S. Lewis called “a true myth.”
Suggestions for further reading:
Robin Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, 2nd ed. (London and New York: Routledge, 2023)
Kurt Weitzmann, ed., Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979) (available to read online for free)
>> Performed by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, dir. Paul T. Kwami, feat. Briana Barbour, 2016:
>> Performed by the William Appling Singers on Shall We Gather, 2001:
Refrain: Rise, shine, for thy light is a-comin’ Rise, shine, for thy light is a-comin’ Rise, shine, for thy light is a-comin’ My Lord says he’s comin’ by and by
This is the year of Jubilee (My Lord says he’s comin’ by and by) My Lord has set his people free (My Lord says he’s comin’ by and by) [Refrain]
I intend to shout and never stop (My Lord says he’s comin’ by and by) Until I reach the mountaintop (My Lord says he’s comin’ by and by) [Refrain]
Wet or dry, I intend to try (My Lord says he’s comin’ by and by) To serve the Lord until I die (My Lord says he’s comin’ by and by) [Refrain]
This song originated in enslaved African American communities in the southern US in the first half of the nineteenth century. They composed spirituals as a way to hold on to hope amid the suffering inflicted on them by their enslavers.
The spirituals often hold double meanings, with words like “salvation,” “deliverance,” and “freedom” referring to God’s acts toward the soul and the body. So “freedom,” on the one hand, can mean freedom from sin and eternal death, but it can also mean freedom from physical bondage. “Light” could be the light of the world, Jesus, returning to consummate his kingdom on earth, and it could be the lantern of an Underground Railroad conductor, come to guide you up north to liberation.
The “year of Jubilee” in the first verse refers to the Jubilee law of ancient Israel, which dictates that every fifty years, the enslaved are to be set free (see Leviticus 25). “Wet” in the last verse may refer to how some enslaved people tried to escape by crossing rivers.
“Rise, Shine, for Thy Light Is a-Comin’” exhorts its hearers to take heart, for the sun of righteousness is on its way.
ART SERIES: Magnificat by Mandy Cano Villalobos:Mandy Cano Villalobos [previously] is a multidisciplinary artist from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her Magnificat series consists of bundles of discarded clothing, bound in string and meticulously hand-coated with imitation gold. The title—the Latin name of Mary’s praise song that opens, “My soul magnifies the Lord!”—invites associations with the Christmas story, including the image of the swaddled Christ child, a gift to the world that surprises and delights.
Mandy Cano Villalobos (American, 1979–), Magnificat XV, 2019. Cloth, string, and imitation gold.Installation of select pieces from the Magnificat and Cor Aurum series by Mandy Cano Villalobos, December 2020, Sojourn Midtown, Louisville, Kentucky
The series debuted in 2019 at Cano Villalobos’s solo show All That Glitters at the Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (UICA) in Grand Rapids. I first encountered it, though, through online promotions of Sojourn Midtown’s Advent 2020 installation to correspond with the church’s sermon series Wrapped in Flesh, for which twelve of the artist’s works, some from her related Cor Aurum (Heart of Gold) series, were placed in niches around the sanctuary.
“The objects, all made of wood and fabric covered in imitation gold, point to something both humble and glorious,” writes Michael Winters, Sojourn Midtown’s arts and culture director. “Like these small sculptures of rags and gold, the birth of Jesus was also marked by humility and glory.”
+++
ARTICLE: “My Swaddled Savior” by Jeff Peabody, Christianity Today: Pastor Jeff Peabody of Tacoma, Washington, describes the traditional Japanese art of furishoki, or wrapping goods in cloths, as he reflects on Jesus having been swaddled as an infant, a wrapped gift given to the world. “Jesus came to us in furoshiki, wrapped in cloths,” he writes.
+++
BLOG POST: How to receive gifts and enjoy feasting without shame, by Tamara Hill Murphy: In this old blog post of hers, spiritual director and The Spacious Path author Tamara Hill Murphy absolves us of the guilt we so often feel around (1) receiving (unreciprocated) gifts and (2) feasting. We should receive both presents and food, she says, as means of grace. Too often we’re embarrassed when we receive a gift from someone to whom we gave no gift, or a gift of lesser value, and so instead of receiving their gift with joy, we receive it with shame or an annoying sense of obligation. But Murphy says she hopes to receive gifts this way: “When Jesus told us to come to him as little children, he must have been imagining the way children openly, delightedly, innocently receive gifts. Children do not question their place as ones worthy of receiving gifts. Children boldly believe the beauty of unearned kindness.”
As for food, how many times have you been to a Christmas party or dinner and heard people bemoan all the fat and sugar they’ve been consuming, and about how they’ll have to punish their body in the new year to work off the extra calories, to shrink themselves back down to size? Feasting, though, is a spiritual discipline, a way to celebrate important events, like the birth of Christ, with family and friends. Feel no shame about indulging in gustatory pleasures this Christmas! Take in the sweet, the creamy, and the juicy! Murphy’s mom’s motto for hospitality is a wise one: “While we feast, we savor.”
On her blog A Clerk of Oxford, medievalist Eleanor Parker also affirms the virtue of feasting, noting how the popular modern practice of fasting in January runs counter to medieval Christian practice:
Since the late 20th century it’s become common to invert the traditional relationship between fasting and feasting in the Christmas season. The ancient custom was to fast in Advent in preparation for the feast, and then to celebrate for at least twelve days after Christmas (and to some degree, all through January). Now we do it the other way around; for many people the feast is followed by a penitential fast, in the form of ‘Dry January’ or New Year’s resolutions about eating less and going to the gym. As a manifestation of the desire for a fresh start, this ‘new year, new you’ impulse is natural enough, but it does strike me as strange that it’s so often framed in negative terms. There’s an odd sense, encouraged mostly perhaps by journalists and advertisers, that the indulgence of Christmas is a ‘sin’ which has to be atoned for – as if eating and drinking with friends and family, to celebrate the turn of the year from darkness to light, is a moral lapse for which one must subsequently make amends by privation and self-punishment. We are much less kind to ourselves in these weeks after Christmas than the strictest confessor would have been in the Middle Ages. Feasting at Christmas is not something to atone for, but a proper observance due to the season; and that feasting is also the sustenance we need to carry us into the New Year with energy and strength.
+++
VIDEO: “Our Vocation of Delight: On Advent, Beauty, and Joy” by Christen Yates: In this thirty-minute “Space for God” Advent devotional from Coracle, artist Christen Yates (Instagram @christenbyates) invites us to experience the Christian “duty of delight” through engaging a selection of artworks by herself, Sedrick Huckaby, Letitia Huckaby, and Ashley Sauder Miller. She opens with a liturgical commission she fulfilled for the Advent season while serving as artist in residence at her church in Charlottesville: a portrait painting of congregation member Arley Bell (née Arrington), a baker who is now the owner of Arley Cakes in Richmond. Waiting for her dough to rise, Arley captures the joyful expectancy of Advent.
Christen Yates (American, 1977–), Advent: Arley, baker, 2016. Oil and gold and silver leaf on board, 48 × 18 in. Collection of All Souls Charlottesville, Charlottesville, Virginia. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Every fall a number of new holiday albums hit the market. Here are five from this year that I’ve been enjoying. I’ve included one or two sample tracks from each.
A smorgasbord of choral works by the British composer Joanna Forbes L’Estrange, plus a few written or cowritten by her husband, Alexander, and one by her son Harry, all performed by Ben Parry’s London Voices. I learned about this album from Angier Brock, who wrote the anthem text for the title track. One of my favorite pieces is the “Advent ‘O’ Carol,” which I’ll be featuring in a devotional post on December 17. Below is a retune of “In the Bleak Midwinter” (risky, since Holst’s beautiful tune is so iconic, but I love what L’Estrange does with Rossetti’s poem), followed by an original jazzy carol about “The Three Wise Women” of Christmas—Mary, Elizabeth, and Anna.
Elise Massa is a singer-songwriter and music minister currently living in Durham, England, where she works for United Adoration, a global nonprofit that seeks to empower local artists to create music and art rooted in Christ and meaningful to their particular context, culture, and language. This quiet, understated album consists of seven original songs based on the O Antiphons, refrains sung during evening prayer on the seven last days of Advent preceding Christmas Eve. Here’s the first one, “O Wisdom (O Sapientia)”:
Named after a phrase from a C. S. Lewis poem, The Hedgerow Folk is an Alabama-based acoustic Americana trio: Jon Myles, Amanda Hammett, and Bryant Hains. “Halfway through the night” is a through line that weaves through this their first Christmas album as a declaration of hope. My two favorite tracks: their reharmonized rendition of “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming,” and their bluegrass arrangement of “Oh Come, Divine Messiah” (which I knew previously only from an a cappella choir of nuns). Also available on vinyl.
As Foretold is a trilogy of albums that takes its subject matter from the prophetic fulfillment passages in Matthew’s Gospel. Part 1, released this week, covers the first two chapters of the book—Jesus’s birth, his flight to Egypt, Herod’s slaughter of innocents, and Jesus’s return to Nazareth. Three of the tracks deal with Joseph’s three dreams—a rarity in music! In his first dream, an angel appears to tell him that Mary is telling the truth, that the son inside her was indeed conceived by the Holy Spirit. In the second dream, treated in the “Out of Egypt” song below, the angel tells Joseph to take his family and flee Bethlehem to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath, and in the third, the angel informs him it’s safe to return to their homeland.
Poor Bishop Hooper is offering the album for free download from their website! Parts 2 and 3 will release in early 2025.
Daniel Charles Damon is a jazz pianist, hymn writer, and retired Methodist pastor from San Francisco, who also works as associate editor of hymnody at Hope Publishing Company. His latest jazz Christmas album features a combination of classics and originals, including two hymns he wrote both the words and music for (“Like a Child” and “Winter’s Child”); “Hunger Carol” by Shirley Erena Murray (words) and Saya Ojiri (tune), which Damon has freshly arranged; and “Peace Child,” another Murray hymn, for which Damon wrote a tune.
It’s difficult to choose a favorite track, as I love this album through and through! I’ll highlight first the nineties hymn “Peace Child,” a pensive reflection on how Christ comes to us “in the silence of stars, in the violence of wars,” “through the hate and the hurt, through the hunger and dirt.” Second, a lively medieval carol whose Latin refrain, “Id-e-o-o-o, id-e-o-o-o, id-e-o, gloria in excelsis Deo!,” translates to “Therefore, glory to God in the highest!”
The vocalist on the album is the award-winning Sheilani Alix. She is accompanied by Damon on piano, Kurt Ribak on acoustic bass, Carrie Jahde on drums, and Lincoln Adler on tenor saxophone and soprano sax.
If you like this album, be sure to also check out Damon’s 2022 Christmas album, No Obvious Angels.
Below are two performances of this Advent song. The first is by a man and woman from the Parroquía Divino Niño Jesús in Morelia, Mexico, and the second is by the choir Tallo De Amor, from Mexico City:
Toda la tierra espera al Salvador y el surco abierto, la obra del Señor; es el mundo que lucha por la libertad, reclama justicia y busca la verdad.
Dice el profeta al pueblo de Israel: “De madre virgen ya viene Emmanuel,” será “Dios con nosotros,” semilla será, con él la esperanza al mundo volverá.
Montes y valles habrá que preparar; nuevos caminos temenos que trazar. él está ya muy cerca, venidlo a encontrar, y todas las puertas abrid de par en par.
En una cueva Jesús apareció, pero en el mundo está presente hoy. Vive en nuestros hermanos, con ellos está; y vuelve de nuevo a darnos libertad.
ENGLISH TRANSLATION:
All earth is waiting to see the Promised One, and the open furrows, the sowing of the Lord. All the world, bound and struggling, seeks true liberty; it cries out for justice and searches for the truth.
Thus says the prophet to those of Israel: “A virgin mother will bear Emmanuel,” for his name is “God with us,” our brother shall be, with him hope will blossom once more within our hearts.
Mountains and valleys will have to be made plain; open new highways, new highways for the Lord. He is now coming closer, so come all and see, and open the doorways as wide as wide can be.
In the lowly stable the Promised One appeared, yet, feel his presence throughout the earth today, for he lives in all Christians and is with us now; again, with his coming he brings us liberty.
Trans. Gertrude C. Suppe
Alberto Taulé (1932–2007) from Barcelona, Spain, was a Roman Catholic priest and a composer of liturgical music who “believed that every parish should have a dynamic, evolving repertoire”—that “quality music and the regular introduction of new songs are vital to a parish’s spiritual health,” as his Catholic Online obituary reads. Working in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), which sanctioned the use of vernacular languages and musical styles in the Mass, Taulé wrote new worship songs that could be grafted into the preexisting liturgical structure, used during the entrance procession, the offertory, the Eucharist, or the closing.
In Spanish-speaking church communities around the world, “Toda la Tierra” is sometimes used as the entrance song for one of the four Advent Sundays. Since the United Methodist Church commissioned an English translation from Gertrude C. Suppe and added the song (with bilingual lyrics) to its hymnal in 1989, it has become more widely known in English-speaking communities as well.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America published a different English translation by Madeleine Forell Marshall in the 2006 edition of its hymnal, Evangelical Lutheran Worship; hers preserves the aabb rhyme scheme of the original Spanish and begins with the line “All earth is hopeful, the Savior comes at last!”
The Spanish verb esperar means both “to wait” and “to hope” and is thus especially fitting to describe the action of the church during Advent.
This is the third installment of my annual “25 Poems for Christmas” series. Included too, on the front end, are poems for Advent, the four-week season of preparation, hope, and expectation leading up to Christmas.
1. “Advent (III)” by W. H. Auden, from For the Time Being: Voiced by the Chorus, who cry out from “a dreadful wood / Of conscious evil,” this is the third section of part 1 of Auden’s book-length Christmas poem in nine parts, For the Time Being—“the only direct treatment of sacred subjects I shall ever attempt,” he said. He wrote the poem in 1941–42. He had originally conceived it as the libretto of an oratorio that Benjamin Britten would write the music for, but the text turned out to be too complex, and Britten abandoned the project. The final two lines of this section set us up for the seemingly impossible feat of divine incarnation: “Nothing can save us that is possible: / We who must die demand a miracle.”
3. “O Orient Light” by James Ryman: Loosely influenced by the O Antiphons (a set of short chants used in medieval Advent liturgies), this Middle English lyric is by the fifteenth-century Franciscan friar James Ryman of Canterbury; it’s one of 166 sacred poems he published in a 1492 collection. Each stanza consists of one rhyme repeated six times, and the Latin refrain translates to “O Christ, king of the nations, / O life of the living.” The fourth stanza is a standout, connecting the salvation wrought by Christ to the healing properties of plants: “O Jesse root, most sweet and sote, / In rind and root most full of bote, / To us be bote, bound hand and foot, / O vita viventium.”
Source: Cambridge University Library, MS Ee. 1.12; compiled in The Early English Carols, ed. Richard Leighton Greene, 2nd ed., revised and enlarged (The Clarendon Press, 1977). Public Domain.
Henk Helmantel (Dutch, 1945–), Nieuw Leven II (New Life II), 1999 (after the 1972 original that was stolen). Oil on canvas, 27 × 24 cm.
4.“Merger Poem”by Judy Chicago: “Merger Poem” is an aspiration that artist Judy Chicago wrote to accompany her 1979 monumental artwork The Dinner Party, a celebration of the richness of women’s heritage, expressed as place settings around a table, that is housed at the Brooklyn Museum. Her vision in the poem is not theistic, at least not explicitly so, but she uses the language of “Eden,” and her descriptions evoke passages from Isaiah about a future harmony, a merging of heaven and earth, in which justice and equity are achieved at last—not to mention the strong eschatological tones that feasting has in Christianity. Each line begins with “And then,” cumulatively generating a longing in the reader for “then” to arrive.
5.“truth”by Gwendolyn Brooks: “And if sun comes / How shall we greet him?” the speaker asks at the opening of this poem. The sun here represents truth, revelation, illumination, which we may seek with weeping and prayer but which can be dreadful when it actually comes. It’s often more comfortable to stay asleep in the dark than to confront the stark brightness of day. But oh, what we miss when we do! Gwendolyn Brooks uses the pronoun “him” for the sun, and it’s easy to read the poem Christologically: you can read it in the sense of any of Christ’s three comings—as a baby in Bethlehem, in personal, inner ways (he reveals himself, and seeks entrance, to human hearts), or as a king and judge at the end of time. Did you catch the reference to Revelation 3:20?
Source: Annie Allen (Harper & Row, 1949); compiled in Blacks (Third World Press, 1987)
P. Solomon Raj (Indian, 1921–2019), Waiting for My Lord, batik, published in Living Flame and Springing Fountain (ISPCK, 1993)
6. “Advent” by Mary Jo Salter: In this poem a mother and daughter are building a gingerbread house when a wintry gust tears a shutter on their actual house off its hinges, the shock of the thud causing, inside, a gingerbread wall to split. I think “house,” here, could be a metaphor for a faith structure; a house of belief. Shutters are doing a lot of work in the text: one falls off in a storm, and the daughter’s Advent calendar consists of twenty-five shutters, one opened each day until Christmas to reveal a Bible verse or narrative scene.
I’m not quite sure how to interpret the poem overall, but it seems to be addressing themes of (in)stability, brokenness and repair, the desire to believe versus the impulse to shut out belief, openness (“The house cannot be closed”), (dis)enchantment, the mother-child bond, and safety and danger (the Christmas story, like faith itself, characterized by both). I can’t decide if the “blank” in the final tercet sounds hopeful or bleak: does it connote possibility or lack? And is the mother suggesting in the final line (a repurposing of the final line from stanza 15) that what’s most real to her is not Mary and the baby Jesus but herself and her own child, right there in that moment?—or is she finding a point of kinship with Mother Mary in the love she feels for her offspring?
7. “Nativity”by Li-Young Lee: “What is the world?” asks a little boy in the darkness; and again as an adult. A poem of spiritual questing, Li-Young Lee’s “Nativity” deals with existential questions, ending with a tercet that evokes Isaac Watts’s famous carol line “Let every heart prepare him room.” Within us we must make a manger, a “safe place,” to receive the wild God.
8.“Nazareth” by Drew Jackson: Ancient Nazareth, where Jesus grew up, was an insignificant village that many believed no good could come out of (see John 1:46). This poem by public theologian Drew Jackson accentuates Jesus’s origins there, his identity as a “southsider” (Nazareth is in southern Galilee). Today some urban neighborhoods on the “South Side” are disparaged, their residents dismissed as poor and lacking education and potential. God chose to incarnate in a rural neighborhood with a similar reputation, not simply dropping in and then leaving but, as the second person of the Trinity, being formed and nurtured in that environment. “Nazareth” is from Jackson’s debut poetry collection, in which he works his way through the first eight chapters of Luke’s Gospel, drawing out the theme of liberation and making contemporary connections.
9. “The Visitation”by Calvin B. LeCompte Jr.: The poet imagines the fields that Mary passes on her way to her cousin Elizabeth’s house joining in the Magnificat, praising the Savior in her womb.
10.“My Darling” by Alexandra Barylski: Mary and Joseph are cuddling in bed as she reflects on the divine interventions that brought and kept them together. The poem references the legend, originating in the second-century Protoevangelium of James and repeated in the seventh-century Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, that Joseph was chosen to wed Mary when from his staff, submitted to the high priest along with those of other single men, there miraculously emerged a dove. Mary expresses appreciation for Joseph’s “visionary love,” patience, and courage in their relationship, his spiritual leadership and support.
Source: Reformed Journal, May 11, 2021
Nicholas Mynheer (British, 1958–), Annunciation, 2017. Oil on handmade paper, 20 × 20 cm.
11. “A Blessing for the New Baby” by Luci Shaw: The speakers of this poem give a lovely benediction over Christ—preincarnate and then embryonic in the first stanza, then out of the womb in the second and third.
12.“Love’s Delights” by Meister Eckhart, rendered by Jon M. Sweeney and Mark S. Burrows: The medieval German mystic Meister Eckhart didn’t write poetry, but many of his sermons have a poetic quality to them, so contemporary poet Mark S. Burrows and writer Jon M. Sweeney, working from an English translation of the Middle High German by Frank Tobin, reworked select excerpts into verse. Adapted from a sermon Meister Eckhart preached on Isaiah 60:1, this poem meditates on the downward movement of love that raises up.
13. “Word Become Flesh” by Seth Wieck: Pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing take a toll on the body. Voiced by Mary, this poem highlights the bodily realities of Jesus’s first coming—Mary swollen, bruised, cracked, and bleeding. She was wounded for our transgressions, in the sense that she endured kicks to the ribs, postpartum hemorrhoids, etc., in order to bring forth our Savior, and by these wounds, because they gave life to Jesus, our healing was made possible. The last sentence is a zinger. Mary gives (physical) birth to Jesus, and he gives (spiritual) birth to her.
14.“Prince of Peace” by Brian Volck: The poet provides his own introduction to this poem on his website: “Octavian Augustus, first emperor of Rome, was known by many titles, including Divi Filius (Son of God) and Princeps Pacis (Prince of Peace). An inscription in Asia Minor states that Augustus’s birth ‘has been for the whole world the beginning of the gospel (εύαγγέλιον) concerning him.’ How strange, then, to use the same names for a contemporaneous but obscure Palestinian Jew, whose understanding of peace, politics, and power was so radically different. How strange to have so long diluted the scandal of the gospel (good news) with accommodations to an Augustan vision of a peace built on the use or threat of lethal violence. Here’s a Christmas poem calling attention to that contrast in a conscious act against forgetting.”
15.“The Burning Babe” by Robert Southwell: Consisting of sixteen lines in iambic heptameter, this poem by the Jesuit martyr-saint Robert Southwell [previously] relates a mystical vision of the Christ child, who appears to the narrator on a cold winter’s night, enflamed and hovering in midair. The poem develops the metaphor of the love of Christ as a fiery furnace that both warms and purifies.
Source: St Peter’s Complaint, and Other Poems (London, 1595). Public Domain.
William Hart McNichols (American, 1949–), Holy Poet-Martyr St. Robert Southwell and the Burning Babe, 2015. Acrylic on wood. [purchase reproduction]
16.“Advent 1966” by Denise Levertov: This poem is shocking in its horror. Written in 1966, it picks up Southwell’s image of the Burning Babe and transposes it to the napalmed villages of Vietnam, where children were being physically (not symbolically or ethereally, as in Southwell’s poem) set on fire by chemical weapons deployed by the US military. Denise Levertov [previously], who was an antiwar activist as well as a poet, uses repetition to strong effect, conveying a sense of the seemingly relentless carnage (the war produced an estimated two million civilian casualties, more than half the total number). Though addressing a specific historical event, this elegy for the innocent provokes us to consider where similar atrocities are happening today.
Source: To Stay Alive (New Directions, 1971); compiled in Making Peace, ed. Peggy Rosenthal (New Directions, 2006)
17.“Christmas Eve”by Christina Rossetti: The Victorian poet Christina Rossetti [previously] opens this lyric with two paradoxes that characterize Christmas—bright darkness and chilly warmth—referencing the general mood of cheer and comfort that coexists with the bleak English midwinter. Why this mirth? Because “Christmas bringeth Jesus, / Brought for us so low.” Jesus was brought down from heaven in the Incarnation, but he would be brought lower still: his spirits sunken in Gethsemane, his body buried in a grave. The second stanza evokes a wedding: dressed in a bridal gown of gauzy snow, earth receives her heavenly Bridegroom.
Source: Time Flies: A Reading Diary (London, 1885); compiled in The Complete Poems (Penguin, 2001). Public Domain.
18. “Hill Christmas” by R. S. Thomas: In a poor rural Welsh village, parishioners make their way across snowy fields, weather-beaten, on Christmas to feed their bodies and souls with a snow-white bread loaf and crimson wine. In the celebration of the Eucharist, they hear love cry “in their heart’s manger.” Then they return to the day’s chores. I think the last line refers to a wayside crucifix.
Source: Laboratories of the Spirit (Macmillan, 1975); compiled in Collected Poems, 1945–1990 (Dent, 1993)
19.“back in the day” by Carl Winderl: In a practice known as “settinglambs on,” when a baby lamb dies in birth, sheep farmers will often take a live lamb (an orphan, or a twin or triplet from another ewe) and cover it in the skin of the deceased one so that, when the grieving mother smells the familiar scent of her deceased offspring, she accepts the lamb as her own. In Carl Winderl’s poem, Mother Mary reflects on that practice and has a premonition of a dead lamb.
Source: Christian Century, December 27, 2023
20.“Hymn 4 on the Nativity of Christ” by Ephrem the Syrian: St. Ephrem, a church father from the fourth century, wrote his theology in verse and is one of the most significant Early Christian hymnists. His Nativity hymns are my favorite; I’m particularly struck in Hymn IV by his meditation on how the Christ who suckles at Mary’s breast also gives suck to the whole world. “He is the Living Breast of living breath,” as Kathleen E. McVey translates the Syriac.
Source: Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns, trans. Kathleen E. McVey (Classics of Western Spirituality) (Paulist Press, 1989)
Maria lactans, late 18th century. Fresco, Church of Narga Selassie, Dek Island, Lake Tana, Ethiopia. Photo: Alan Davey.
21. “Nativity” by Scott Cairns: This is the first in a pair of ekphrastic poems called “Two Icons,” in which the poet, who is Greek Orthodox, describes an icon from his home prayer corner. The first three stanzas engage in constructive wordplay: Jesus is wrapped in swaddling bands by his mother, and she is rapt—enraptured, wholly absorbed—by him. She holds him in her gaze and in her hands, and is beholden to him. Icons are about just that: beholding Christ and the sacred mysteries and deepening our affection for the One who holds us in affection. In Nativity icons our gaze is directed to “the core / where all the journeys meet, appalling crux and hallowed cave and womb,” where we are beckoned, like the magi, to bow before the incarnate God.
22.“Star of the Nativity” by Joseph Brodsky: The Nobel Prize–winning Russian poet Joseph Brodsky was born into a Jewish family, but he was captivated by the story of Jesus’s birth and wrote many poems about it. The final stanza of this one gives us the unique perspective of the Star of Bethlehem, looking down—the Father’s beaming pride.
Source: Nativity Poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001)
23. “Wise Women Also Came” by Jan Richardson: The Gospel of Matthew tells us that when Jesus was born, wise men came from the east to worship him. But wise women came too, Jan Richardson surmises. They came during Mary’s labor—midwives assisting with the birth. They came with lamps, fresh water, and blankets.
Jan Richardson (American, 1967–), Wise Women Also Came, 1995. Collage. [purchase reproduction]
24.“Green River Christmas” by John Shea: Theologian and storyteller John Shea reflects on how, after experiencing something scary or unpleasant (like getting a shot or a teeth cleaning), mothers often give their child a treat. Christmas is a kind of supreme treat after the penitential season of Advent, during which we confronted the state of our spiritual health and remedied any shortfalls. Think, too, of the liturgy of (somber) confession and (sweet) pardon every Sunday at church, a prelude to the feast of bread and wine. At the Lord’s Table, we are fed—the gifts of God for the people of God. The Eucharist is the subtext of the final stanza, where Shea describes the presentation of Jesus in the temple forty days after his birth. There he is received by “the long-starved arms / of Simeon and Anna.” They had hungered for salvation, endured a long period of waiting; now they are filled.
25.“Taking Down the Tree” by Jane Kenyon: “Tick, tick, the desiccated needles drop.” This poem is about the passing of time—the death of another year—and the glumness that often sets in after the holidays are over, but it’s also about the storage of memories. In many households, Christmas ornaments are a multigenerational collection of memories. As with hanging them on the tree, taking them off and packing them away is a ritual that may prompt us to revisit certain past experiences or periods in our life. After we unplug the stringed lights and wrap up the baubles for safekeeping, then what? How will we inhabit the twelve months until next Christmas?
Whereas in our present age it’s common for families to take down their Christmas decorations on Twelfth Night (January 5) or Epiphany (January 6)—and many American Christians do so even sooner—in medieval Europe they typically stayed up through Candlemas on February 2, or were removed the evening before. Yes, Christmas was celebrated for forty days in the Middle Ages! Why that span? Because forty days after his birth, the infant Christ was presented in the temple according to Jewish custom and inspired the famous song of Simeon about finally getting to see God’s salvation and glory. The feast of Candlemas commemorates this event each year, which many medieval worshipping communities regarded as the bookend of the Christmas season.
In her book Winters in the World: A Journey through the Anglo-Saxon Year, Eleanor Parker notes that Candlemas is the last feast of winter and the first feast of spring—a transitional festival that looks back to Christmas and forward to Easter (86). The date coincides with a significant point in the solar year: midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Read more in an UnHerd article by Parker, “Light a candle; spring is coming.”
So as we celebrate Candlemas this Friday, we bid farewell to Christmas and prepare to welcome Lent. The Chorus of Westerly models a respectful send-off in a video they released in January 2021, combining a choral performance of the “Candlemas Eve Carol” with a recitation by James Lawson of “Now Have Good Day”—both texts from early modern England.
The text of the first carol, originally published with the title “Ceremonies for Candlemasse Eve,” is by the poet-priest Robert Herrick (1591–1674), and the tune is traditional, collected from an old church gallery book; the two appear together in The English Carol Book (Second Series) (1923), edited by Martin Shaw and Percy Dearmer. The Chorus of Westerly sings the first two stanzas and refrain:
Down with the rosemary and bays, Down with the mistletoe; Instead of holly, now upraise The greener box (for show).
The holly hitherto did sway; Let box now domineer Until the dancing Easter day, Or Easter’s eve appear.
Thus times do shift; each thing his turn does hold; New things succeed, as former things grow old.
(Update, 12/31/25: I just learned that Kate Rusby sings this text, to an original tune, on her 2008 album Sweet Bells.)
Herrick describes the English family tradition of taking down the Christmas greens—rosemary, bay, mistletoe, holly—on Candlemas Eve, replacing them with boxwood, which would stay up for the duration of Lent.
“Burning the Christmas Greens,” uncredited illustration from the January 29, 1876, edition of Harper’s Weekly
The remaining three stanzas move through the rest of the church year, associating yew with Easter, birch with Pentecost, and rushes and oak with Ordinary Time. The changing of seasonal decorations becomes for Herrick an emblem of the transience of life.
Now have good day, now have good day! I am Christmas, but now I go my way.
Here have I dwelt with more and less [i.e., everyone] From Hallowtide till Candlemas, And now I must from you hence pass; Now have good day!
I take my leave of king and knight, Earl and baron, and lady bright; To wilderness I must me dight; [I must prepare myself to go into the wilderness] Now have good day!
And of the good lord of this hall I take my leave, and of guests all; Methinks I hear that Lent doth call; Now have good day!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Another year I trust I shall Make merry in this hall, If rest and peace in our fair land may fall; Now have good day!
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Now fare ye well, all in fere; [together] Now fare ye well for all this year; Yet for my sake make ye good cheer; Now have good day!
This sixteenth-century carol is compiled in the commonplace book of the London merchant Richard Hill (Oxford, Balliol College MS 354).
LOOK: Adoration of the Magi by Rogier van der Weyden
Rogier van der Weyden (Netherlandish, 1399–1464), Adoration of the Magi, ca. 1455. Painting on oak wood, 139.5 × 152.9 cm. Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany.
This remarkable painting by the early Northern Renaissance master Rogier van der Weyden shows three kings arriving from afar to worship the Christ child. All the splendor of foreign courts comes to the dilapidated stable of Jesus’s birth, which is relocated to the Low Countries of the fifteenth century. (Notice the contemporary cityscape in the background.)
The most senior king greets the child first, humbly removing his hat and crown and kneeling on the ground, his fur-lined velvet robe rubbing the dirt. He supports the child’s feet with one hand and with the other gently lifts the child’s hand to kiss. Two fellow sovereigns stand behind him, followed by their entourage and various locals.
Standing on the left, in red, is Joseph, hat and staff in hand. He looks reflectively on the visitors, taking it all in. Leaning against the stone wall behind Joseph, a rosary between his fingers, is the painting’s donor. While it’s true that sometimes the practice of painting donors into biblical scenes was done for flattery or, if a condition of the commission, out of arrogance, more often the motivation or purpose was to imaginatively place yourself into the sacred scene as a witness, making yourself present to an event that was in time and yet that also transcends time, in that its impact is ongoing. Seeing oneself as a participant in Christ’s story, a devotee alongside those who walked with him in the flesh, can aid in spiritual contemplation.
Another anachronism—or rather, a collapsing of chronos and kairos—is the crucifix hung on the central pillar of the stable! This of course alludes to the cruel death Christ would face some thirty years later.
This painting is the centerpiece of a triptych originally made for St. Mary’s Chapel in the church of St. Columba in Cologne. The wings depict the Annunciation and the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.
Rogier van der Weyden (Netherlandish, 1399–1464), Saint Columba Altarpiece, ca. 1455. Painting on oak wood, 139.5 × 152.9 cm (central), 139.5 × 72.9 cm (each wing). Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany.
LISTEN: “Die Könige” (The Kings) from Weihnachtslieder (Christmas Songs), Op. 8, by Peter Cornelius, 1870 | Arranged for a cappella choir by Ivor Atkins, 1957 | Performed by VOCES8, the VOCES8 Scholars, the VOCES8 Foundation Choir, and Apollo5, dir. Barnaby Smith, feat. Jonathan Pacey, 2023
Drei Könige wandern aus Morgenland; Ein Sternlein führt sie zum Jordanstrand. In Juda fragen und forschen die drei, Wo der neugeborene König sei? Sie wollen Weihrauch, Myrrhen und Gold Dem Kinde spenden zum Opfersold.
Und hell erglänzet des Sternes Schein: Zum Stalle gehen die Kön’ge ein; Das Knäblein schaun sie wonniglich, Anbetend neigen die Könige sich; Sie bringen Weihrauch, Myrrhen und Gold Zum Opfer dar dem Knäblein hold.
O Menschenkind! halte treulich Schritt! Die Kön’ge wandern, o wandre mit! Der Stern der Liebe, der Gnade Stern Erhelle dein Ziel, so du suchst den Herrn, Und fehlen Weihrauch, Myrrhen und Gold, Schenke dein Herz dem Knäblein hold!
English translation:
Three kings journey from the East; A little star leads them to Jordan’s banks. In Judaea the three of them seek and inquire Where the newborn king might be. They wish to make offerings to the child: Gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
And brightly shines the light of the star. The three kings enter the stable; They gaze in rapture at the child, Bowing low in adoration. Gold, frankincense, and myrrh They bring to the child as offering.
O child of man! Follow them faithfully. The kings are journeying; oh, journey too! Let the star of love, the star of grace, Light your way as you seek the Lord, And if you lack gold, frankincense, and myrrh, Give your heart to that sweet child.
The German composer and poet Peter Cornelius (1824–1874) was a friend of Franz Liszt’s and Richard Wagner’s. “Die Könige” (The Kings) is the third, and most popular, song in a Christmas cycle he wrote for voice and piano, the others being “Christbaum” (Christmas Tree), “Die Hirten” (The Shepherds), “Simeon,” “Christus der Kinderfreund” (Christ the Friend of Children), and “Christkind” (Christ Child). Cornelius began writing his Weihnachtslieder cycle—both text and music—in 1856, and it underwent several rounds of revision, incorporating input from others, before being published in 1870.
From VOCES8’s Live From London Christmas 2022 broadcast, the performance of “Die Könige” above features as the baritone soloist Jonathan Pacey, who sang bass for VOCES8 from 2015 to 2022. He chose this song as the encore in his final concert. Pacey’s voice is absolutely gorgeous!
This post concludes our journey through the cycle of light, Advent-Christmas-Epiphany. Thanks for walking the road with me! I encourage you to keep journeying, keep following the light, throughout the rest of the church year. May love and grace, as “Die Könige” says, light your way as you seek the Lord.
If you’d like to leave a donation to help offset the costs of running Art & Theology, which I’d really appreciate, you may do so through PayPal or this secure Stripe form. You can expect many more new posts in 2024! Just not at a daily frequency.
ANNOUNCEMENT: Vatican to hold Stations of the Cross art contest: Artists from across the globe are encouraged to participate in the Vatican-sponsored contest for fourteen new Stations of the Cross paintings. The winner will be announced September 30, 2024, awarded €120,000 (about $131,000), given a year to complete the commission, and then have their set of paintings exhibited in St. Peter’s Basilica during Lent 2026. The first step is to fill out an online application, which will become available January 8, with a deadline of January 31. Learn more at the link. (Update: The registration link is now live at https://contest.viacrucis2026.va/en/registration.)
+++
ART OBJECT: Burgundian Crèche, ca. 1450: In researching depictions of Joseph at the Nativity, I came across this charming little limestone-carved crèche from fifteenth-century Burgundy, France, acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Set inside a dilapidated brick interior patched with wattled matting, the scene portrays the infant Christ lying in a wattled manger that rests on a crumbling wall ledge. Such an unusual composition! I’m not sure why the infant is placed so precariously and at a height when there’s a carved cradle available on the ground, where angels kindly fluff his pillow, but I suppose it was to avoid overcrowding and for visual balance.
Circle of Antoine Le Moiturier (French, 1425–1495), Nativity, Burgundy, France, ca. 1450. Limestone with later paint and gilding, 17 3/4 × 25 7/8 × 7 1/4 in. (45.1 × 65.7 × 18.4 cm). Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
A donkey licks Christ’s feet while an ox licks his hand, which he appears to delight in, as he lifts his arm for better access. To the left and right of him are a trio of angels and shepherds, respectively, excitedly leaning in from outside to get a better look. Mary gazes up at her son in adoration while Joseph dutifully tends to a parental chore: drying one of Jesus’s freshly washed linens at the fire. (Dad doing laundry—huzzah!)
ART COMMENTARY: On The Adoration of the Magi by Domenico Veneziano: From the Visual Commentary on Scripture comes this 2022 video, one in a series filmed on-site at the Gemäldegalerie in Berlin. Theologian Ben Quash and art historian Jennifer Sliwka discuss an early Italian Renaissance tondo depicting the Adoration of the Magi.
+++
SONGS:
>> “Rejoice with Exceeding Great Joy”: Written by Lanny Wolfe in 1978 and performed by Reggie Smith, Charlotte Ritchie, and Ladye Love Smith at Bill and Gloria Gaither’s Homecoming Christmas 2006:
>> “Star of Bethlehem”: Written by Noel Dexter, arranged by C. S. (Cedron) Walters, and performed by the Jamaica Youth Chorale at their 2019 Christmas concert. Noel Dexter (1938–2019) was a Jamaican composer, choir director, and music educator, and this is probably his best-known work. It’s set to a Nyabinghi rhythm.
When the star of Bethlehem arise, hallelujah When the star of Bethlehem arise, hallelujah When the star of Bethlehem arise Come show me where the young child born!
There were wise men coming from the east, hallelujah There were wise men coming from the east, hallelujah There were wise men coming from the east Come show me where the young child born!
They brought gold, frankincense, and myrrh . . .
Not a man can save my soul . . . But Jesus! Show me where the young child born!
+++
VIDEO:“#NatZooZen: Giant Pandas Mei Xiang and Tian Tian in the Snow”: This Smithsonian’s National Zoo cam footage from January 2021 shows two giant pandas at play, sliding down a snowy hill! So adorable. Tian Tian and Mei Xiang arrived at the National Zoo in 2000 and in 2020 produced a cub, Xiao Qi Ji. All three pandas returned to Beijing in November, having been lent to the US by China as part of a cooperative research program whose contract has expired.
Ulyana Tomkevych (Ukrainian, 1981–), The Birth of Christ, 2016. Egg tempera on gessoed wood, 11 1/2 × 12 in. Sacred Art Pilgrim Collection of John A. Kohan. Photo: Victoria Emily Jones, at East Meets West: Women Icon Makers of Western Ukraine, St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church, Chatham, Massachusetts, 2017.
Frosty yet warm, this icon by Ulyana Tomkevych of Ukraine is one of my favorite Nativity paintings. It shows Mary embracing her swaddled newborn, Jesus, amid a bleak midwinter. She reclines across a red blanket of flowers inspired by Ukrainian embroidery patterns, which hovers mystically above a line of barren trees, suggesting that Christ’s birth has ushered in a new springtime.
The wisps of white against the cool green-grays at the bottom suggest snowdrifts, whereas the faint rose tints at the top imply a suffusing warmth. The silver semicircle at the top, with its emanating beams, represents the mystery and presence of God breaking into the world.
Following Greek Orthodox tradition, Christ’s halo is inscribed with the Greek letters ώ Ό Ν (omega, omicron, nu), spelling “He who is” (see Exod. 3:14). Tomkevych is a member of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, which is in communion with the Holy See but follows the Byzantine Rite.
LISTEN: “Balulalow” | Original German words by Martin Luther, 1535 (title: “Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her”) | Translated into Scots by James, John, and Robert Wedderburn, 1567 | Music by Peter Warlock, from his Three Carols suite, 1923 | Performed by Sting on If on a Winter’s Night, 2009 [see full credits]
O my deare hert, young Jesu sweit, Prepare thy creddil in my spreit And I sall rock thee in my hert, And never mair from thee depert.
But I sall praise thee evermore With sangis sweit unto thy gloir. The knees of my hert sall I bow, And sing that richt Balulalow.
Literal English translation:
O my dear heart, young Jesus sweet, Prepare thy cradle in my spirit And I shall rock thee in my heart, And nevermore from thee depart.
But I shall praise thee evermore With songs sweet unto thy glory. The knees of my heart shall I bow, And sing that true Balulalow.
English translation, from the German, by Catherine Winkworth:
Ah! dearest Jesus, holy Child, Make thee a bed, soft, undefiled Within my heart, that it may be A quiet chamber kept for Thee.
My heart for very joy doth leap; My lips no more can silence keep. I too must sing with joyful tongue That sweetest ancient cradle song.
These two stanzas in Middle Scots are an extract from the longer “Ane Sang of the Birth of Christ,” also known by its first line, “I come from heuin to tell,” from the Ane Compendious Buik of Godly and Spirituall Sangis (1567). In this part of the hymn, the speaker asks Jesus to be at home in their heart and receive their sweet songs. Mary is the model for this reception, love, and adoration of the Christ child—she who cradled him, praised him, sang to him, and held him close.
The word balulalow is derived from the Scottish word for “lullaby.”
For all fifteen stanzas in Scots, see here, and for Catherine Winkworth’s full English translation, here. The hymn actually originated in German from the pen of Martin Luther, who titled it “Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her” (From Heaven Above to Earth I Come). It spread to the Netherlands and the British Isles in the 1560s.
In his recording, the cross-genre English musician Sting uses neither the German folk tune that Luther paired with the text upon its first publication, nor the melody Luther composed for it in 1539. Instead Sting uses the 1923 setting written by the English composer Peter Warlock for his Three Carols suite.
In Sting’s rendition, which he arranged in collaboration with Robert Sadin, the female backing vocals evoke a wintry wind and a snare drum creates a forward momentum, while a cello supports Sting’s languid singing. The tone is tender and haunting.
This post is part of a daily Christmas series that goes through January 6. View all the posts here, and the accompanying Spotify playlist here.
Art & Theology 