Carols are a familiar part of worship services during Advent and Christmas, and many of the most beloved Christmas carols have ancient origins or roots in other countries.
"Silent Night" was written by a priest in Austria. "Once in Royal David's City" was penned by an Irish Sunday School teacher and "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" dates to the sixth or seventh century.
But some old favorites joyfully sung at Christmas year after year were written in America, including "Away in a Manger."
While the song might not have the theological heft of Charles Wesley's "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," it's an enduring favorite. The simple carol has often been linked to the famous reformer Martin Luther, but Michael Hawn, director of the sacred music program at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, says the song undoubtedly has roots in 19th-century America.
Hawn writes about the history of hymns on the website for Discipleship Ministries of the United Methodist Church and he has examined the history of "Away in a Manger." He said that the late Methodist hymnologist Fred Gealy concluded the original two-stanza form of the song more than likely originated among German Lutherans in Pennsylvania some time around 1885. The song first appeared in Little Children's Book for Schools and Families, published by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America, in that year.
The original two stanzas are:
Away in a manger,
No crib for a bed,
the little Lord Jesus
laid down his sweet head.
The stars in the sky
looked down where he lay,
the little Lord Jesus,
asleep on the hay.
The third stanza didn't come along until 1892, but its origins aren't known. As for the association with Luther, Hawn says it appears that the mix-up can be traced to James R. Murray, who referred to the song as "Luther's Cradle Hymn" when he published it in an 1887 song collection titled Dainty Songs for Little Lads and Lasses. Murray claimed that Luther composed the song for his children and that it was "still sung by German mothers to their little ones."
"There's no basis that Luther wrote it as a hymn for his children," Hawn said. "There is one he wrote for his children, but this was certainly not it."
Hawn said that, at the time, it was common to attach
the name of a famous person to a musical composition to increase the odds of it selling.
"A lot of those collections, you don't know who wrote them. It's ambiguous, a promotional device before the days of copyright," he said.
One thing that sets the song apart from other Christmas carols is that some suggest the song is heretical or contains poor theology at the least, particularly in the phrase, "the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes."
"Modern society knows that a baby who does not cry is a cause for concern. Hearing a baby's cry at birth is a joyful sign of life," Hawn said. "If the suggestion in the hymn is that the baby was a kind of super infant whose divinity overshadowed his humanity, then we may be moving into the realm of Gnosticism, suggesting that even in infancy Jesus had special knowledge."
Another favorite, "O Little Town of Bethlehem," was written in 1868 by Phillip Brooks, who was serving as rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia. The music was added by the church organist, Lewis Redner. The story goes that Brooks, while on a trip to the Holy Land in 1865, was so inspired by the Christmas Eve service at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem that he wrote a poem about it. It begins:
O little town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie;
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.
Hawn said in the United States the song is paired with its original tune, "St. Louis," but in England the hymn is often set to the folk tune "Forest Green."
As is the case with many hymns and carols, a stanza from the original song was omitted as time went on:
Where children pure and happy
Pray to the blessed Child,
Where misery cries out to thee,
Son of the undefiled;
Where charity stands watching
And faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks,
And Christmas comes once more.
"It's a regretful omission because it gives a hint of concern for those that are in need," Hawn said. "I think there probably are a few hymnals that include that stanza, but there's also the issue that lots of times people don't want to be reminded of those things."
The phrase "son of the undefiled" was criticized by some who said it sounded too much like the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, so Brooks changed it to "son of the Mother mild" before omitting it altogether, Hawn said.
At St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Little Rock, parishioners will sing some of their favorite Christmas carols during an evening service on Sunday, among them "Away in a Manger" and "O Little Town of Bethlehem," said Tim Allen, organist and choirmaster.
Allen said the carol service gives parishioners the opportunity to sing their old favorites.
"Christmas music is very sentimental to people," Allen said. "Music is such an integral part of Christmas in all sorts of ways, not just in the church, but particularly in the church. ... It's such an evocative time. Everyone has their own memories, so we make sure there are plenty of opportunities to sing their favorite carols because that's really important. People come to church to sing those carols."
Allen said he can play around with the music when it comes to choral pieces and try new songs and music, but the carols are a must.
"I'd be left out to dry if I didn't have 'Silent Night' on Christmas Eve, for example," he said.
Kyle Linson, director of music and worship arts at First United Methodist Church in Little Rock, said music can help set the tone for the season. Songs for Advent have an anticipatory mood, for example. It's a quiet excitement but when Christmas arrives the "roof comes off" and the mood is joyous and celebratory.
"Music can do that," he said. "I can make you feel very anxious sitting in that pew or make you happy or pull some emotions from you that you haven't felt in some time. Music really has a lot of power."
Carols play a large role in creating the mood for worship services during the Christmas season, from the quiet stillness of "Silent Night" to the exuberance of "Joy to the World."
"People come to be inspired and they come to hear the music of Christmas," Linson said. "I think Christmas is the one time where even people who don't go to church like to be in church because it hits a spot that takes them back to a childhood memory or a happy place. It's a sanctuary in the truest sense of the word."
Christmas carols sometimes contain lyrics not necessarily related to the birth of Christ, such as "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" and "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day." Both include references to war.
The former, by Unitarian minister Edmund Hamilton Sears in 1849, has a missing stanza that is very revealing about the culture in which the song was written:
But 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!
Hawn said the song so commonly sung at Christmas doesn't mention the birth of Christ and instead focuses on the angels in the narrative, making it quite unusual.
The carol known as "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day" was originally the poem "Christmas Bells," written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in 1863. His son had joined the Union troops without his blessing and was seriously wounded in battle. That, along with the death of his wife, inspired Longfellow to write the poem, which begins:
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
References to the war come later and the tone turns bleak:
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-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!"
The song does end on a happier note with this: 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."
Religion on 12/20/2014