What We Gain When We Repeat the Sounding Joy
Christmas itself is a story that’s told in songs. It began with four songs, and all the way through Christian history, from the earliest reinterpretations of the Christmas story and the wonder of the Incarnation, Christians have reenacted those songs. Songs about Christmas are as old as Christmas itself. It has attracted the greatest artists in history, whether it’s folk art or classical art. We have such extraordinarily great hymns and an extraordinarily deep tradition that at Christmastime, it is possible to see carols in Hollywood movies and in high street stores that have nothing to do with Christianity—because that’s what great art does.
Christmas hymns have become the lead Bible storytellers of the season. They connect to people in such deep ways, even if they’re not tracking with the depth of everything that’s being sung. It is a phenomenal opportunity to communicate the things that are true about Christmas in the songs that people sing.
There’s something so significant about repeating these year after year so that they become part of people’s lives. When you “repeat the sounding joy” in a Christmas hymn, you find that people can sing them better. People know the songs their whole lives, and they think about their meaning in more profound ways and emotionally interact with the song more.
Christmas carols do a great job of not just taking you through the Christmas story but taking you through the big narrative of the Bible story. A lot of them dig right into Old Testament prophecies and Old Testament verses, giving you a vision of heaven and the second coming of Christ. They offer a massive arc, a big metanarrative through the Scriptures, and that’s a huge opportunity. And a lot of the traditional carols are melodies that are not only easy to sing but also wonderful to sing. They’re fun, they’re great for harmonies, and you can really use that to great effect to help encourage kids to sing and to have a positive time with family.
There are so many good hymns, and it can be hard to narrow them down. But these are six of our favorite Christmas hymns.
There are many reasons I love this hymn. I love the breadth of the story it introduces. I love how it connects the Old Testament with the coming of Christ. I just love the majestic nature of it—the grandness of it. One other reason that I love it is that it’s one of the first moments that the congregation really stands up and sings during our Irish Christmas show. I love that moment. There’s a visible rise as well as an audible one. People love to sing that song. I love the melody. I love what the band plays. I absolutely love it.
Since Kristyn went with an Advent hymn, I’ll go Advent as well. I would say “Veni, Veni, Emmanuel,” “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” There are very few pieces of music that really feel like onomatopoeic pieces of music. In other words, they sound like both the lyric and the emotion. “Holy, Holy, Holy” is a good example of that, and I think “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” is similar. The text for this song was a Latin text going back to the seventh century, but the melody that we adapted was from the fifteenth century and is actually a French melody. And French music has always had an element of mystery through it. This melody has that, and I love that. The sense of the mystery and the anticipation are perfectly matched in the music.
As Kristyn said, I love how this song goes through the Old Testament. You get the Rod of Jesse, and you get Dayspring, and so on. It’s taking people through the whole story of Jesus, which only begins to make sense when you’ve walked through the Old Testament first.
And the chorus is amazing. As a songwriter, it’s just amazing how that melody sounds right everywhere. It sounds right when it’s monks singing unaccompanied. It sounds right with an organ. It sounds right in the Royal Albert Hall with an orchestra. It sounds right with rock bands, with metal bands, and with Americana singers. It doesn’t matter. It’s just so perfect.
This is a hymn that I have only become familiar with in the last few years. Ricky Skaggs, the great bluegrass singer and mandolin player, introduced it to us. He joined us for one of our Christmas concerts and sang the first verse a capella. It was just incredible and stopped us all in our tracks. It was amazing.
The words are beautiful. The melody is just so achingly beautiful. It’s an epiphany hymn written by Reginald Heber, who also wrote “Holy, Holy, Holy.” I’ve been singing that one since I was a little girl, and it’s wonderful to find other hymns written by hymn writers you’re already familiar with. But this was a little hidden gem for me.
It’s beautiful because it is a meditation on the beauty and wonder of Christ. It’s very poignant and revels in the beauty and the light now revealed in Christ. I love singing this song.
John and Betty Stam were missionaries and published writers in their twenties when they left for China where they were martyred for the cause of the faith. Frank Houghton, who was an Anglican bishop, wrote this hymn after hearing about their deaths. “Thou who wast rich beyond all splendor, all for love’s sake becamest poor.” I can never sing the hymn without thinking of that story. I think it’s extra poignant for a couple of reasons. First of all, John Stam’s hymn collection was given to his brother, who then gave it to his great nephew, who then bequeathed it to us. We have lots of hymnbooks that belonged to the Stam family, and in some ways, The Sing! Hymnal is an extension of a gift that was given to me by the Stam family.
But I think the biggest thing is this: we think about the Christ child who came for the nations and who these wise men and Gentiles came to visit, and then we think about where China was in the 1920s and 1930s and about the promise of the Red Army to eradicate Christianity from the country. Today, depending on who we speak to, are there 75 million or 100 million or 125 million Christians in China today because of the faithfulness of some of these people? It’s extraordinary. It really is. It puts to shame some of our own small ambitions and small daily concerns when you think about the radical witness of those people. So that is a great hymn.
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Do you know what’s really interesting in this song? Christina Rossetti was writing this at a time when education wasn’t a given for young ladies. They wouldn’t have had the same access as men to education, nor would they have the same access to livelihood and employment. So it’s interesting when she reaches the last verse, “If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; if I were a wise man, I would do my part. Yet what can I give him? Give my heart.” It’s a wonderful conclusion that even at that time with all the things that were going on culturally—the gains and the losses—the beauty and glory and gift that is Christ is so superior to anything at any time. She resonates deeply with that idea at the end of this hymn. That’s the best line: “Yet what can I give him? Give my heart.” It’s so simple, and I love the poetry of it. I think with Christmas carols there is greater license for poetry and imagery and a little more mystery, and I just love that.
The greatest songs are always written by the Irish. And so I’m going to finish with an Irish hymn: “Once in Royal David’s City.” The second half of our Christmas carol service always begins with this song. Cecil Frances Alexander was the wife of the Bishop of Derry who was later the Anglican Primate over all of Ireland. Cecil was concerned, as a young pastor’s wife, by the shallowness of the songs that were being sung by children (almost 200 years ago). She was so deeply concerned that she decided to take the Apostle’s Creed, break it down into parts, and write hymns on each subject in the creed so that children would know and learn about the beauty of the Lord Jesus and what we believe. For example, from “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth,” she wrote the hymn “All Things Bright and Beautiful.” That was from the collection called Hymns for Little Children.
She did what all carols do so well, and she told a story. “Once in royal David’s city stood a lowly cattle shed, where a mother laid her baby in a manger for his bed.” And she relates it to children. “He came down to earth from heaven who is God and Lord of all, and his shelter was a stable, and his cradle was a stall; with the poor and mean and lowly lived on earth our Savior holy.” She likens it to children: “Through all his wondrous childhood he would honor and obey.” But then she takes it right through the whole story, and she finishes with, “Not in that poor lowly stable, with the oxen standing by, we shall see him; but in heaven, set at God’s right hand on high; where like stars his children crowned all in white shall wait around.” So in this one song Alexander takes all the imagery of the Christmas story, and she tells the whole Christian gospel. For the courage to write hymns that make Christ and his gospel and the truths of the Scriptures so beautiful to so many generations of children (and of course, just for being Irish as well), I’ll pick this as my favorite Christmas hymn.
Hymns from Every Nation and Tribe and People and Language
You need all types of writers to write for the church. Each writer brings a little something different. Another great reason why a hymnal is so important is because the voicings are so full of variety that they give us different perspectives, which is great. Even in these six carols we’ve looked at, that represents music or text from ten different countries and from quite a few different centuries. It’s amazing. And that’s the beauty of this, isn’t it? This gives us the humility that we need as Christians. In each generation we have to have the humility to stand on the shoulders of the previous one and learn from them.
This article is adapted from The Crossway Podcast: The Gettys’ Favorite Christmas Hymns with guests Keith and Kristyn Getty.
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