Christmas hymns

I have a very tenuous relationship with Christmas hymns. Note now, I said hymns not Christmas music like “rockin’ around the Christmas tree” or other such nonsense). Christmas and advent hymns have a strange pull, almost a magnetism about their melodious droning. For years I grew up with them playing in the background of the house while the thanksgiving meal was still being prepared. This no doubt led to my compulsive need to eat turkey when I hear away in the manger (kidding of course). But after some years of this and developing my own identity and Christmas traditions, Christmas hymns have taken an almost non-existent role and, I don’t hear them as much in my own life. Whereas I used to listen to them at church, at home, and sing them in programs, now my advent season is practically devoid of them save Sunday morning.

But, like I said before, there is a pull about Christmas hymns. And I discovered as recently as the beginning of this advent season. It has nothing to do with the music. Now, don’t get me wrong; I love music and can be as picky about it as anyone out there, but that is not the point I’m making. I don’t think the pull of Christmas hymns has much to do with the music but with the power of some of the poetry contained therein. Think about some of our best Christmas hymns: O Holy Night, speaks to the condition of humanity and the deep cosmic need that we have for the fulfillment of prophecy and the birth of the Messiah. O little town of Bethlehem has this wonderful line about how all the hopes and fears of all the years are met in the birth of Christ. Everything, Anything, material or not, wrapped up in a cave somewhere in backwater Israel. The book of Colossians has a verse about that where it says that all things hang together in Christ. This Christ that lays vulnerable in the city of David.

I guess sometimes with the repetition, things in our lives can lose their luster. Songs can become old, tired, beaten. But we sing time not because we like to “get down” but because they tell a story. As we sing them it is as if we turn to each other and say, “hey do you remember this Christ who came…all my hopes and fears are wrapped up in who this messiah is.” And we say back, “yeah I remember…I remember lying in sin and error but now I can say that Christ is the Lord and live in the one who sets the captives free.” We repeat this chant with the rest of creation that is groaning in this advent season. We repeat it over and over again to remember that we need this savior, this messiah, this Jesus. May you have a blessed Christmas season and consider dusting off those old hymns and join in the deep chant all over again.