Christmas Hymns

Ah . . . the joy of singing Christmas Hymns.

My family is musical — I am a classically trained pianist, my brothers play the guitar, trumpet, and drums, while my sisters play the viola, flute, and clarinet.  From a very young age, we formed our own little orchestra and we were known as the Musical O’Malleys among our friends and neighbors.  Our love for music has been passed down to subsequent generations and now, when we all gather for Christmas or in the summer, our little orchestra can have as many as 25.  Not bad for one family, eh?

How many of us think about where the traditional Christmas hymns have come from?  How many of us pay attention to the composer or lyricist of the hymns in our church hymnals?  Whether Catholic or Anglican or Lutheran or Presbyterian or Baptist, it is likely many of the hymns you sing in church on Sunday, or from your living room at Christmastime, were written by Charles Wesley.  Charles and his brother, John, were Anglican priests who founded the Methodist movement in the 18th Century.  Although John is given most of the credit for founding the Methodist Church, it is Charles who wrote over 6,000 hymns.  Six thousand!

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing, written in 1739 but revised by Charles’ good friend, George Whitefield, in 1753, is one of my favorites.  The lyrics are very devotional — with references to scripture in both the Old and New Testaments.

The Twelve Days of Christmas was written as a code for Catholics to learn the catechism and doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church during a time of persecution in England.  Between 1558 and 1829, it was illegal for Catholics to practice their faith publicly or privately.  If caught, they could be imprisoned or worse — hanged, drawn, and quartered.  (In my Thanksgiving Musings post, I addressed the English oppression of the Irish.  Making criminal the ability to practice their Catholic faith was another way for the English to oppress and control their subjects.)  This particular story of the origins of The Twelve Days of Christmas could, very well, be pure legend but, because it is a story I have heard since my childhood, I tend to believe there is some truth behind it.

Most of the traditional favorite Christmas hymns we sing year after year after year, date to the 18th and 19th centuries.  Many of them do have historical significance and most are scripturally based.

My favorite hymn, Silent Night, would not have been written if not for a broken organ.  It was the year 1818, Christmas Eve in the Austrian Alps, when the church organ at the newly constructed Church of St. Nicholas, quit working.  Distraught over his planned midnight Mass, Father Joseph Mohr, quickly wrote a new poem — “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright . . . .”  Father Mohr explained to his organist, Franz Gruber, the situation and asked him to compose a simple tune to accompany the Father Mohr’s lyrics.  That night, Christmas Eve 1818, Silent Night was sung for the first time as a duet accompanied by a guitar.  Many congregations sing Silent Night the way it was intended — accompanied by a guitar rather than an organ — with the lights dimmed and each person holding a lit candle.  Mmmm . . . . Such a beautiful and holy song, made more beautiful by the peacefulness of a candle-lit church.