The Elventh Day to Christmas

     I have loved today's carol for a long time, but gone back and forth about the rightness of it. After all, if we are to preach the gospel in it's original form and not make substitutions to cater to different cultures, how is this an exception. You might guess from the photo by now that I'm talking about the Huron carol. 

     It refers to braves rather than shepherds, and God as Gitche Manitou. What am I to do with this?

     What I didn't do was actually look into the origins of the song. The Huron Carol was written in 1642 by Jean de Brébeuf, a Jesuit Missionary with the Canadian Huron Indians, and he wrote it in their native language. When the song became popular in later centuries and was translated into English, the Huron word for God, "Gitche Manitou," or, simply, "Manitou" was retained. That was a valid translation, I'll concede, and it was a valid term to use. The other term I have more of a problem with is the hunter braves rather than Shepherds. 

      I understand that the Hurons probably had no idea what a shepherd was, and, most likely, didn't even have a word or phrase for such a thing in their language, but then, I've always believed, in such a case, you ought to teach them what Shepherds are, rather than making a substitution for something in their own language. After all, we Europeans had to learn what Magi were rather than call them "Kings" as the songs like to do. 

     However, with this realization, I leaned that I had an awful lot of grace for the "King" substitution in European mythos simply because I'm used to it. Surely I can show a bit of grace for a Jesuit missionary who was trying to teach the Huron's the truth of Christ's incarnation through song, and, I might add, a very lovely song at that. 

      So, without further ado, I present to you the beautiful Huron Carol, in English, of course. This version is arranged by none other than Dan Forrest who did a simply magnificent job with this. Below are the lyrics since it's a little hard to understand. I do think that Brébeuf was brilliant with weaving in the Latin at the end. That was the other thing that didn't change across translations, and I love it.