December 20, 2020 - The Fourth Sunday of Advent

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We sing carols every year.  Most of them are ones we sing year after year and some of them hundreds of years old.  Sometimes it's nice to hear of the times in which they were written or who wrote these lyrics or the tune, and what they were experiencing at the time.  In the past, Deborah has shared carol lessons on the Sunday after Christmas, but because we are not offering a worship service that Sunday, we decided to do this today.  We are going to share some background on four different carols.

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

In 1849, Dr. Edmund Sears, a Unitarian Minister in Wayland, Massachusetts was seeing

debates over slavery, poverty in his community.  This was what was on his mind when he was sitting down to write his Christmas Eve sermon that year.  Sears read verses 8 and 9 of the second chapter of Luke, “And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night.  An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.” He then sat down and wrote a poem.  

This five verse poem was called “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear.  He began his sermon with a poem he had written written ten years earlier called, “Calm on the list’ning ear of night comes heaven’s melodious strains,” and then ended it with this new one.  

When first delivered, it was probably seen as more of a charge or challenge than the story  of a miraculous birth in a far off land.  Sear wanted his congregation to reach out to the poor and hear how they might best reflect the spirit of Christ in their daily lives.  

As well as being a minister, Sears was a magazine and newspaper editor and was able to share his poems with a wider audience.  The Christian Register, one of the publications for which Sears penned features, printed “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” in its December 29, 1849 issue.

Richard Storrs Willis was a Yale graduate who had been composing pieces since his youth.  In 1848, he was the music critic for the New York Tribune.  He discovered that a tune he had written, simply called “Carol”, fit perfectly with Sears’ poem.  The tune and lyrics were first published together in 1850 as “Study Number 23”, but it was the second arrangement, published decade later, called, “While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night,” that is still sung today.

O Holy Night

In 1847, Placide Cappeau de Roquemaure, a commissionaire of wines but also known for his poetry, was asked by the local clergyman in his small town to write a poem for Christmas mass.

He came up with the words on his way to Paris but decided that it needed to be put to song, so talked with a friend of his, Adolphe Charles Adams.  Adams was a well-known classical musician who wrote opera and ballets.  This was a different kind of task though.  It was not an opera or a ballet.  It was a simple poem for a small church for its Christmas mass.  And Adams was Jewish and this was for a holiday he didn’t celebrate.  

The song was played at the Christmas mass and then shared widely with other churches.  But then Cappeau became a part of the socialist movement and church leaders discovered Adolphe Adams was Jewish.  The song was then denounced by the church.  Of course, although the church denounced it, the French people still sung it.  

It wasn’t until 76 years after the song was written that John Sullivan Dwight, another Unitarian minister in Massachusetts, discovered this French song and its beautiful lyrics and translated it to English.  

Then, in 1906, Reginald Fessenden, using a new type of generator, spoke into a microphone and for the first time in history, a human voice was broadcast over the airwaves.  He said, “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.”  After he finished reading from the gospel of Luke, he then picked up his violin and played, “O Holy Night.” the first song ever sent through the air via radio waves.  

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is considered by some as America’s greatest poet.  Longfellow was in school at three, reading classical literature and writing stories by six, and at age 19 was a professor of modern language.  He seemed to have it all at a very young age, including a wife, a home, and a great reputation.  Tragically, after having only been married for about three years, his wife died.  He married again seven years later and his life seemed to pick up again.  He had five children, he wrote some of his most classic poems, and was reputed to be one of the greatest writers ever produced by the New World.  Tragedy struck again in 1861.  His second wife died in a fire, and his son, a soldier in the Civil War, was wounded in battle and sent home to recover.  As he watched many families around him losing sons, husbands, and other loved ones to this war, he asked his friends, “Where is peace?”

It is said, that on Christmas morning of 1863, he was out walking and heard the bells of the church.  He went home and wrote a poem that was later set to music, almost ten years later, by John Baptiste Calkin, from England.  “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” became one of the most popular carols in both Europe and the United States.  The tune we’ll sing today was actually composed by Johnny Marks, who wrote the tunes for such Christmas favourites as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” and “Holly, Jolly Christmas.”  

The words to this song are a plea for sanity in a world gone crazy and they offer hope that the joy and peace that Christ was born to offer would be realized.  And so we continue to hope today, in this crazy world.  We continue to sing out, “God is not dead, nor doth he sleep.  The wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, goodwill to men.”  Or to all.  Let’s sing and remember that we are not the first and nor will we be the last to struggle with loss and chaos and long for an end to suffering and a world filled with peace.

Joy to the World!

Joy to the World was not supposed to be a Christmas carol.  Isaac Watts was the son of a nonconformist that had been imprisoned in England for his revolutionary ideas not approved by the church.  Following in his father’s footsteps, Isaac Watts was also a radical thinker.  One thing he pushed against was the music of the church.  He found it to be uninspired and monotonous.  His father challenged him to come up with something new, so he did, and he didn’t stop until he had written more than 600 hymns and hundreds of other poems.  It was while studying Psalm 98 that Isaac was inspired to write his most famous work, Joy to the World.  It was actually first sung to the tune, “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.”  (sing part of it).  It just doesn’t have the same excitement, does it?  Well, because Isaac and his views were not tolerated by many, few embraced the new song.   Joy to the world; the lord is come, let all the earth rejoice.

But then Lowell Mason came along.  Mason was an American musician, who also had radical ideas.  His were around music being taught in schools.  He wrote many tunes that became popular with churches, probably the most famous being, “Nearer My God to Thee.”  He composed a new tune called Antioch, referencing two songs from Handel’s Messiah, “Lift Up Your Head” and “Comfort Ye.”  Eventually he found Isaac Watts psalm-inspired poem and linked the two together.  It was in 1911 when this combination climbed to number five on the charts.  
So although this song has no connection to the Christmas story, the joy expressed in psalm 98 and in this song, expresses the joy sung by the angels and by congregations who gather to celebrate the birth of the Christ child.

Deborah Laforet