What sweeter music can we bring
Than a carol, for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?
Awake the voice! Awake the string!
Dark and dull night, fly hence away,
And give the honor to this day,
That sees December turned to May.
Why does the chilling winter's morn
Smile, like a field beset with corn?
Or smell like a meadow newly-shorn,
Thus, on the sudden? Come and see
The cause, why things thus fragrant be:
'Tis He is born, whose quickening birth
Gives life and luster, public mirth,
To heaven, and the under-earth.
We see him come, and know him ours,
Who, with his sunshine and his showers,
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.
The darling of the world is come,
And fit it is, we find a room
To welcome him. To welcome him.
The nobler part Of all the house here,
is the heart.
Which we will give him; and bequeath
This holly, and this ivy wreath,
To do him honour, who's our King,
And Lord of all this revelling.
What sweeter music can we bring,
Than a carol for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?
Those are the words of a carol taken from a poem by Robert Herrick (1591-1674) and set to music by John Rutter (1945- ). I first heard it in 1997 when we lived in Frazier Park, California. I was listening to Christmas music on the radio on a station coming from Bakersfield. I fell in love with it immediately. It is a beautiful carol. If you’ve never heard it, look it up and listen to it. My favorite performances of it are by The Tabernacle Choir (of course) and King’s College Choir, Cambridge. Here are two YouTube links to a recording by each of them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgiZXDMV6aE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ucVQSJunR4
Now that the Christmas season is officially underway here, our house is almost continually filled with the sweet music of the season. Over the years we’ve collected many Christmas albums – on vinyl, CD, and computer MP3 files. We have enough music to fill our home non-stop for many, many hours. Music, from the secular songs to the sacred carols, from Classical to Pop, is a major part of our Christmas celebrations. I especially love the carols.
The word carol has an interesting origin. It’s official meaning in English is “a joyful song.” The word comes to us from the Old French word carole meaning “a round dance accompanied by singers,” which in turn came from the Medieval Latin word choraula, “a dance to the flute,” which came from the Greek word khoraules, “a flute player who accompanies the dance.” Our English words “choir” and “chorus” come from the same root. Carols are not necessarily only for Christmas. My copy of The Oxford Book of Carols contains almost 200 carols for Christmas, New Years, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, and each of the seasons, Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. Many of them are of ancient origin. Of the eighty carols for Christmas in The Oxford Book of Carols, I only know twenty-two. I guess I have some musical exploring to do.
Many of the Christmas carols we sing come from other countries. The most famous is Silent Night, which comes from Austria and has a famous, if somewhat mythologized, origin story involving a destructive mouse. The original German carol actually has six verses, but we only sing three of them. The words in the German don’t have quite the same meaning as our English words. For fun I plugged the German words into Google Translate to come up with a literal computer translation (I do odd things like that for fun on cold winter days).
Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht, Silent night, holy night,
alles schläft, einsam wacht everything sleeps, lonely wakes
Nur das traute hoch heilige Paar. only the dear and holy couple.
Holder Knabe I'm lockigen Haar. Gentle boy in curly hair.
Schlafe in himmlischer Ruh', Sleep in heavenly rest,
Schlafe in himmlischer Ruh' Sleep in heavenly rest.
Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht, Silent Night Holy Night,
Hirten erst kundgemacht Shepherds first made known
Durch der Engel Halleluja, Through the angel Hallelujah,
Tönt es laut von fern und nah: Sounds it aloud from far and wide:
Christ, der Retter ist da! Christ the savior is here!
Christ, der Retter ist da! Christ the savior is here!
Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht, Silent Night Holy Night,
Gottes Sohn, o wie lacht Son of God, oh how laughs
Lieb’ aus deinem göttlichen Mund, Love from your divine mouth,
Da uns schlägt die rettende Stund’. The hour to save us strikes.
Christ, in deiner Geburt! Christ in your birth!
Christ, in deiner Geburt! Christ in your birth!
Tuesday was the first of December and, right on cue, it snowed. All day on Tuesday and most of the night it fell softly. By Wednesday morning there was five inches of it on the ground. After the snow stopped falling, the weather turned sunny and the snow was beautiful under the bright blue sky. It got a little warmer later in the week and most of it melted. I like snow in December. In my mind, that’s how December should be. If it were up to me, the snow would stay, in moderate amounts, from December through February – and then go away until the next December. But it’s not up to me and we sometimes have no snow at Christmas when I want it and lots of it in March, April, and even May when I don’t. Such are the vagaries of nature.
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| Snow on December first. |
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| After the snow stopped falling. |
I love being up early in the morning if for no other reason than to be awake just in case the sunrise is beautiful. Winter sunrises are often spectacular and I never want to miss one. We had one last week on Thursday. I stood awestruck as I watched the sky glow like flame. I remember when I was about twelve years old, watching a sunset and realizing for the first time that every sunrise and sunset is completely unique – there never was and never will be one just like the one I was seeing. I was coming to grips with understanding time and mortality and it was a revelation to me. It filled me with wonder then and it still does.
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| Sunrise on Thursday. |
Our Christmas movie viewing is well underway now. We’ve watched the cartoons The Polar Express, Arthur Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and The Snowman as well as several Hallmarks, although I couldn’t tell you which ones. We also watched one of my favorite Christmas movies, Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory. It’s a made for TV production done in 1966 starring Geraldine Page with Truman Capote narrating it in his odd voice. It is in black and white and our copy is a bit scratchy and I love it. Geraldine Page was a great actress and she’s perfect in this as Buddy’s cousin Sook. The story is set during the Great Depression and is autobiographical. Capote had a sad childhood – a sad life, really – but he was a great writer.
To get into the spirit of the season, I’m reading Charles Dickens’ Christmas Books, A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Haunted Man. It’s been a few years since I last read them and I love them. My favorites of them are A Christmas Carol and The Cricket on the Hearth. I’ve watched a lot of film adaptations of A Christmas Carol and haven’t found one that I like. From the 1951 film Scrooge starring Alastair Sim (who chortles obnoxiously) to Disney’s Mickey’s Christmas Carol (1983) with Scrooge Mc Duck, to The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) to the 2009 Disney animated version with Jim Carrey as a hideous and obnoxious Scrooge – all of them have serious flaws and none of them come close to the book. They always omit or add things or portray scenes carefully described by Dickens in a totally different way. And I know of no film version of The Cricket on the Hearth, which would make a great movie. I’ll stick with the books.
We decided at the last minute to drive down to the Thayn’s house. We left yesterday morning and got back this evening. It was a very quick trip, but a very long drive. We took them a Christmas tree. While we were there, they treated us to lunch at an Indian restaurant yesterday. I’d never had Indian cuisine before except the curry, naan, and samosas that Miriam has made for us, which are all delicious. At the restaurant I tasted chicken masala, tandoori shrimp, chicken tikka, and several kinds of naan. Some of it was pretty spicy, but it was really good.
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| Headed south with the Thayn's tree. |
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| The tree in their house. |
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| Lunch at the Indian restaurant. |
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| Untangling lights. |
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| Reading to June and Mabel. |
Today we went to church with them and when we got home, we had lunch. And then it was time to drive home. We didn’t stay to decorate the tree, there wasn’t time. The Thayns decorated later in the afternoon and sent us a photo. We are getting our Christmas tree tomorrow. We will decorate it for Family Home Evening. Then all we’ll need for nature to provide us with a nice blanket of snow and our decorating will be complete.
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| The Thayn's tree decorated. |
Dan
