OT Advent Calendar: Merry Christmas!

Advent has always been my favorite time of year. Not only does it lead up to the festival of Christmas, but my birthday falls right around half way through. What’s more, I grew up in snowy Central New York—that’s the barren hinterlands of Upstate, for those in the city so nice they named it twice—and if I didn’t get a White Christmas, the Great Lakes were good for a storm around my birthday so there’d at least be a good beginning to the winter.

Advent is far from an untouched subject around these parts, so I’m clearly not alone.

Your OT Advent Calendar this year will be musical. We’ll talk about diamond-in-the-rough traditional tunes just waiting for renewed popularity, crimes against Christmas, the silly songs and the songs that have become modern traditions. We’ll also talk about the notion of true Christmas Carols, those which address the twelve days festival beginning on Christmas itself, including not just the one day-counting song but another. 

Let’s dive in, shall we?

Today’s theme is Merry Christmas!

Of course I decided to do this on a year when Advent is the longest it can possibly be.

Merry Christmas, all! For those who celebrate, I hope today is filled with joy, health, love and peace. For those who do not, I hope today brings you blessings!

Today I present to you four songs which depict the Earthly and Heavenly activity on the day of the nativity itself, as told in the Gospels.

“Sound, Sound Your Instruments of Joy”

The history of this song is scanty, but it appears to be as old as the 18th Century, possibly, and was included in English hymnals until being dropped, for reason or another, but was maintained by choirs in the Southwest of England. The Watersons, whose version is below, learned it from a recording of a Cornish Men’s choir from the 1930’s.

I’ve removed the choral repetitions from the lyric below:

Sound, sound your instruments of joy
To triumph shake each string
Let shouts of universal joy
Welcome the new born King</span>

See, see the gladdening dawn appears
Bright angels deck the morn
Behold the great I Am is here
Great I Am is here
The King of glory’s born

Surprising scenes, stupendous love
The Lord of life descends
He left his glorious clouds on high
Glorious clouds on high
To be the sinner’s friend

Let Heaven and Earth and Sea proclaim
The wondrous love of God
And all the universal frame
Sing praise, sing praise
Sing praises to our God

There’s something about this song that really hits home. What it lacks in grandeur it more than makes up in honesty.

“Joy to the World”

This is more a song if you’re looking for grandeur. I’m certain you’ve heard it because it is the most-published Christmas hymn in America since the beginning of the 20th century. Written in 1719 based on Christian interpretations of elements of the Book of Genesis and Psalms 96 and 98. An 1848 arrangement by American Lowell Mason is the most frequently heard.

This version, by Sufjan Stevens, is much more intimate than most renditions:

I won’t quote the whole lyric as it’s so familiar, but merely point out my favorite lines, a beautiful image of mankind singing in jubilation and the natural world joining in:

Joy to the world! the Savior reigns;
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,

“While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks”

This beautiful, pastoral carol was written—the words, anyway—by Nathan Tate in 1696, based on the Gospel of Luke. In South Yorkshire it lived on being put to a variety of tunes and was often known by the name of the tune.

Here are the Watersons, singing it to the tune called “Winchester Old”:

Here is a choir singing it to the tune called “Cranbrook”:

While shepherds watch their flocks by night
All seated on the ground,
The angel of the Lord came down
And glory shone around.

Fear not, said He (for mighty dread
Had seized their troubled minds),
Glad tidings of great joy I bring
To you and all mankind.

To you in David’s town this day
Is born of David’s line
A Savior, who is Christ the Lord;
And this shall be a sign.

The heav’nly Babe you there shall find
To human view displayed,
All meanly wrapped in swaddling bands,
And in a manger laid.

All glory be to God on high,
And to the earth be peace;
Goodwill henceforth from heav’n to men
Begin and never cease.

“Angels We Have Heard on High”

Another very popular tune, this song—which stretches the word gloria to an astounding eighteen syllables—is a combination of an old hymn tune, “Gloria,” and a lyric paraphrased from an older French carol called “Les Anges dans nos campagnes.” James Chadwick, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, published this paraphrase in 1862. It became quite popular in the Southwest of England—yes, them again!—and caught on from there.

This is pretty cool:

You’re not rid of me yet, I’ve got two days of bonus coverage up my sleeve . . .