Joyfully Singing

         This post was supposed to happen last night, but circumstances intervened and I find that it is, perhaps, more fitting today.           The carol I chose to close out this year's series is one that I have shared once before several years ago and which I have known from my earliest years. I only discovered that there were actually words when I was in my late teens and they remain some of the most beautiful and profound Christmas lyrics in my ken.           Perhaps you've never heard The Golden Carol of The Wisemen, or perhaps, like me in childhood, you've only ever heard the melody and never the words. This medieval carol needs little introduction, and I don't wish to say much about it. Today is Christmas, we will be relaxing among family members, opening presents, eating food, and possibly taking naps.         ...

         I love songs that tell stories. Even better when they tread the fine line between reality and metaphor. Today's carol is one that does so using a motif we don't usually think about for Christmas; a dark night. We really don't know whether Jesus was born in the morning, noon, evening, or in the middle of the night. We assumed that he was born in the evening because it was during that night when the shepherds were summoned, but really, he could have been born anytime during the previous day, but regardless, Christmas night, as in, Christmas Eve, is traditionally the time we celebrate the birth of Christ.         I discovered this song only this year, and I believe it was written only last year so I feel as though I've come full circle with you all, sharing ancient carols from nearly 1000 years ago, as well as ones that have been out for barely a year, but just savour these beautiful verses by Chris Anderson wit...

         Yes, this is another re-run, something I posted a few years ago, which some of you may not have had the chance to hear, not to mention a good refresher for the rest of us. It's another John Rutter classic, based on a fifteenth century English Poem by John Audelay. In it, Christ is portrayed as a flower, the sweetest and most fragrant flower ever to blossom. I thought it would be fun, though, to share the original lyrics. They spoke and spelled a little differently in the 1400s. Let me know if you can decipher this without opting to the translation below. You go up points in my estimation if you're able to make it through and understand, roughly, what's being said in each stanza. This is where I am most grateful for my muddling through Spencer's Faerie Queene, and Chaucer's Canterbury tales.  A couple tips, if you don't know where to start, remember that at this time there was no standardised spelling so people spelled things the way ...

            I don't think Kim Andre Arnesen has has written anything that isn't beautiful. That is, I have not yet discovered anything by him I don't like. His style is so ethereal and touching. Several of you may remember "His Light in Us" which I shared several years ago which remains one of my favourite Christmas choral works to this day. Today's song is different(Which is a good thing), much more hymn like in compostition, but so moving and beautiful.            I usually tend to steer away from Christmas carols for this series that are not explicitly Christ focused. It's not that I won't join in a rousing round of sleigh bells, or sing Deck the Halls as loudly as anyone else, but for this series, my specific goal is to point my readers towards Christ, the cynosure of the entire celebration. If I can help to lift even one unbeliever's eyes towards our Lord of glory, or have a hand in ...

            I don't know about you, but I'd probably have gotten pretty bored rather quickly had I been a nightwatchman in an European town in the 1600s. Hence, it is no surprise to me that the watchmen of that time, as well as before and after, adopted the habit, often, of carrying an instrument with them and singing to mark the passing of time, and to let people know that they were on duty.           Perhaps you weren't aware that the night watch were not only there to keep an eye out for any funny business and to protect honest people from brigands and trouble makers during the witching hours, but also to proclaim the time. The call, "Three O'clock and all's well!" Was a familiar sound if you happened to be up that early. Sometimes they would act like weathermen, embellishing things with a description of what things were like outdoors; "Four O'clock and clear skies!" They might say.  ...

         I think I've mentioned before how much I love the medieval ability to pain pictures with their songs. Though sometimes a little more on the imaginative side when they talked about the Christmas story, their songs somehow managed to capture the essence, the spirit of the celebration and event.         Today's song, while relatively modern, written in the '80s, manages to do something similar. I first encountered this song several years ago, and it didn't make a great impression on me. In fact, I completely forgot about its existence during the interval years. It was only this year, like last year's epiphany with Jesu Sweet and Dear , that this song burst back into my field of sight, and I wondered how I could have missed it this time.         I think part of it was the ensemble who performed it: Glad, a Christian men's a-Capella group formed, I believe, in the '80s and contin...

        Of all the Old Testament prophecies of Jesus' birth, those in Isaiah are my favourite. Perhaps the most well known and beloved is Isaiah 7:14. Most of us can quote it from memory: "Behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Immanuel - God with us."          Of all the names of Christ, "Immanuel" or, "Emmanuel" is one of the most beautiful. It means something beautiful too: God with us. To think that a pure and holy God would come dwell among such broken, depraved creatures as we are. If that doesn't floor you to seriously consider, then I suggest you are not considering it seriously enough. Think about it. Think about it some more... the gulf between you and an ant is far smaller than the gulf between you and God, and yet God chose to come dwell among us. What a thought!          God with us! The prophets dreamed of it, the saints of the o...

      Today's carol is rather late and rather rushed and I have friends to thank for bringing it to my attention only last night. When I started this series I only had eleven carols lined up. Yes, there was a twelfth I didn't know about yet. I was confident, however, that I would discover it, or it would come to me and it did. Thank you Nathan, you know who you are!         It takes a rather unique but by no means novel approach and is matched with a carol we're all familiar with: What Child Is This, and weds the two in a hauntingly beautiful counterpoint.         The idea of mixing two songs in such a fashion, as I mentioned earlier, is not a new practice. It was done often in medieval times, but many of the original tunes for those have been lost and and the lyrics eventually became inseparable so that people today think of them as one song; the Macaronic In Dulci Jubilo is perhaps the most...

         Have you ever seen the night sky in all of its glory without being washed out by all of our lights? I've only glimpsed it once out a car window while driving back to Santan Valley from The Grand Canyon in Arizona. It was a very small glimpse, and I know even then I didn't see half of it. I wish I'd rolled down the window and put my head out. I wish now that in spite of the ungodly hour and the distance we had too drive, I had begged my friend to stop the car for just a few moments there, so I could really see.         I think I was just too exhausted and sunburned to care enough at that point. I wish I'd exerted myself. Lord willing I'll have a second opportunity. However, that little glimpse made me wonder, what must the Christmas star have looked like to the magi to stand out in the night sky among all of those dazzling ones? We know that they didn't exactly follow the star as some songs would like to indic...

         Yes, I'm pretty sure there were probably more than three wisemen, they certainly weren't kings, the star was most likely a supernatural phenomenon rather than a natural conjunction, or whatever people like to say, and we really don't know if they came from Persia.           Now that we've gotten all of that sorted, we are free to enjoy this beautiful carol which, inaccuracies aside, focuses not so much on the Wisemen but what they represent. This is something I love about the older Carols, they're excellent at painting a picture. This one, albeit, was written rather recently in the 1800s, but still conveys that imagery, that scene that we have come to associate with Christmas. For me, in many ways, it's like and anchor for my mind, a picture that holds a thousand words spoken and unspoken about what I believe regarding Christmas and all its facets. You'll see more of that picture throughout the comi...

        Have you ever wondered why bells are associated with Christmas? This is probably one of my favourite associations in the European Christmas tradition. Songs have been written, ballads have been performed, plays have been promoted, stories have been told, and bells have somehow wormed themselves into panoply of Christmas attendants.          Why? Because around the time of the middle ages when a lot of the Christmas traditions that we celebrate today were getting started, bells were a huge component of people's every day life. Bells were used to announce a wedding, a birth, a death, or to welcome an important personage into town. They were used to warn of an approaching enemy, to sound an alarm for a fire or other natural, or man-made disaster, they were used to indicate the passing of time, as well as herald holidays and celebrations.           In fact, if you ...

           Yes, it is that time of year again. There is, at very least frost on the ground outside this morning and I migrated quickly downstairs as my room becomes an icebox in this season. I'm so grateful. There's something about the cold that makes me feel more alive and present, something that makes me want to move (beyond the simple need to stay warm), sing, and interact with others.            It's why I'm so grateful that we chose our Christmas date for winter time (At least for those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere). Festivals during the cold are the best possible kinds.          The picture above is Elliot and I at a concert we sang in this past Sunday. I should have liked to get a couple more of my brothers in on it, but they were here, there, and everywhere this season. Elliot was a start, I'll work on the rest. It all goes to show, ...