Why Christmas Carols? (O Little Town of Bethlehem)

Christmas Eve, 1865. Episcopal priest, Philips Brooks’ travels throughout the Middle East lead him to Bethlehem.

(Bethlehem, 1894)

Pausing on one of the hills just outside the little village, Brooks watches as the sun sets and the stars punch their way through the cloudless night sky. A keen observer and articulate pastor, Brooks finds himself transported to a similar night two millennia earlier and marvels at this “wondrous gift” born to a poor peasant and her husband.

Brooks returned home and told no one of his experience on the Bethlehem hills and of the poem he’d begun to compose there. Three years later, while preparing for a Christmas Sunday meditation, Brooks recalls his feelings there on those hills and finishes the poem, handing the verse to Lewis Redner, his organist. That Sunday, the parishioners of Holy Trinity, Philadelphia sang out for the first time: “O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie. Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by.”

Two things strike me as profound in this poem. In April of the year of Brooks’ journeys through the Holy Land, the Southern and Northern States finally sat down together in peace after four long years of bloody war. Later in that same month, President Abraham Lincoln, a man much admired and beloved by Brooks, was brutally murdered. In a year of such joy and sorrow, of war and of peace, Brooks finds himself overcome by the tranquility of a little town far away from his Philadelphian home: “Where children pure and happy pray to the blessèd Child, where misery cries out to Thee, Son of the mother mild; Where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door, the dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.”

The other point of profound interest is in Brooks’ neglect of his poem. For three years, Brooks share with no one his reflections. Yet the story still needs to be told. Though it was boxed away and covered in dust, the story needs to be told. And though we sit now 2000 years from that same quiet village, the story needs to be told. The story must be told.

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.

For Christ is born of Mary, and gathered all above,
While mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars together, proclaim the holy birth,
And praises sing to God the King, and peace to men on earth!

How silently, how silently, the wondrous Gift is giv’n;
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of His Heav’n.
No ear may hear His coming, but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still, the dear Christ enters in.

Where children pure and happy pray to the blessèd Child,
Where misery cries out to Thee, Son of the mother mild;
Where charity stands watching and faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks, and Christmas comes once more.

O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!

~ by sholander on December 26, 2007.