It’s a strange phenomenon that we hire music pastors or worship leaders in our churches, yet many times we insist on not letting them “pastor” us in the area of music. We want to sing our favorite songs, and we want to sing our favorite style of music, regardless of the theological content of the songs or the inherent quality of the music itself.
This is a widespread phenomenon that every church deals with.
Especially at Christmas.
Most theologically-minded musicians dread the Christmas season, because much of the music we sing is so shallow (at best) or heretical (at worst).
This list, then is not an attempt to be downright mean to our traditions, but to examine our traditions in light of biblical realities. It may be a tough pill to swallow, but the pill may just start a theological healing process in the Church.
Here’s my list of 5 of the theologically worst Christmas carols ever:
O Little Town of Bethlehem
Phillips Brooks’ text is very poetic, indeed, but it’s just as meaningless as it is poetic. The theological lines of the song are vague. For example:
- Verse 1: “The hopes and fears of all the years Are met in thee tonight.” — In Bethlehem all the hopes and fears of the world come together in the baby Jesus. Yeah. Either that’s so deep I just don’t get it, or it’s so shallow it has no meaning.
- Verse 2: Couldn’t find any lines of theological significance.
- Verse 3: Jesus is described as the blessings of God’s heaven. The last line is a little confusing, but I’m sure it has something to do with “asking Jesus into your heart.”
- Verse 4: “Cast out our sin, and enter in.” That’s about as deep theologically as this song gets.
It Came Upon the Midnight Clear
There is not a single line of text in this song that is theologically salvageable. The whole song is about angels. The third verse leads us right up to Christ and then performs a bait-and-switch, throwing us under the angel bus instead:
And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way
With painful steps and slow,
Look now! for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
This is where I expect the next line to be about Jesus, cf. Matthew 11:29.
And hear the angels sing!
What? All you have to offer me in the trials of life is listening to angels singing?
Silent Night, Holy Night
Yes, I’m going to go there. This has to be one of the most “sacred” of all Christmas carols. Messing with Silent Night is like defacing a church door. This song is one of the biggest sacred cows of our Christmas traditions. What could possibly be wrong with this song?
- Verse 1: This is a lullaby. We’re wishing baby Jesus a good night’s sleep. Which of course, any new mother would tell you, that first night is anything but a good night’s sleep. Especially in a cave with animals.
- Verse 2: This verse retells briefly the story of the angels appearing to the shepherds and proclaiming the birth of the Messiah. Nothing to criticize here, except perhaps that a lullaby is an awkward setting for that retelling.
- Verse 3: We praise the night, the star, the angels and then Jesus. Why discriminate against the “wise men”?
- Verse 4: “Radiant beams from thy holy face”–anyone want to offer an explanation for this one?
So why did this one make the list again? For one, the lullaby theme (see the next song for explanation). Also, the complete lack of any incarnational substance whatsoever.
Away in a Manger
This song has to be one of the all-time worst Christmas carols ever. Once again it’s another lullaby. The problem with the lullaby genre for Christmas songs is that the point of Christmas is not the baby. The point of Christmas is the incarnation of God himself. There’s a huge difference.
Besides the lullaby issue, the second and third verses of this song have distorted some truths for children for ages. In the second verse we’re told that even though “the cattle are lowing” (which is a very odd word to begin with) baby Jesus wakes up, but he doesn’t cry!
Could someone please show me that in the Bible? Of course he cried. That’s what babies do. I was into my 20s before I realized that this song was a massive hoax. Jesus was human. He cried.
In the third verse we pray for baby Jesus to “fit us for heaven, to live with Thee there.” Yet nowhere does Scripture indicate that that’s the goal. Heaven is not the place where we live with Jesus for all eternity. But that’s another discussion.
The First Noel
This song attempts to retell all of the minor points of the birth narrative as if they were the major storyline itself:
- Verse 1: Shepherds. These are perhaps the most important secondary characters in the birth narrative.
- Verse 2: The Star. This story appears in Matthew’s narrative, but no Christmas carol has ever sought to deal with Matthew’s reason for including the narrative. What’s the point of the story: the magi or the star?
- Verse 3: More Star. And Wise Men.
- Verse 4: Yet even more Star. And more Wise Men.
- Verse 5: This verse isn’t traditionally sung, so here it is for your reading pleasure:
Then did they know assuredly
Within that house the King did lie;
One entered it them for to see,
And found the Babe in poverty.
- Verse 6: Look! More Wise Men.
- Verse 7: The fact that we’re already at verse 7 is problematic. Does anyone really want to sing this many verses? Nevertheless, this verse is also not usually included, so here it is:
Between an ox stall and an ass,
This Child truly there He was;
For want of clothing they did Him lay
All in a manger, among the hay.
- Verse 8: Anyone tired of this song yet? This verse is actually a fairly descent doxology, despite its universalism in the last line.
- Verse 9: What? You didn’t know there was another verse? Check this out:
If we in our time shall do well,
We shall be free from death and hell;
For God hath prepared for us all
A resting place in general.
‘Nuf said.
So what are your most loved/hated Christmas songs?
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Dittos on It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. How many people realize that Edmund Sears was a Unitarian? So naturally he couldn’t write about God the Son.
The third verse of Silent Night, except the first line, is a single complete sentence, which is addressed to “Son of God, . . . , Jesus, Lord,” whose subject is “Love’s pure light,” and whose verb is “beams.” “Radiant” should be set off by commas.
Away in a Manger represents a social ideal, professed mostly in earlier centuries in England but rooted in classical philosophy, in which people looked up to lords who in turn were supposed to embody, among other things, self-control (the famous stiff upper lip) under all circumstances. (Of course, they often didn’t.) So the song is, in a way, about the incarnation of God after all: *this* baby in particular acts like a perfect Lord by not crying when the cattle low (that is, moo very loudly, as they do at night, making a racket that can be heard for miles) right next to him in the stable. Unfortunately, it was often taken as a reproach to the rest of us kids, who would cry.
The First Noel: English narrative folk songs often had large numbers of verses; see Francis James Child’s collection of adult ballads. If today we don’t have the attention span to deal with them, whose fault is that?
I wasn’t really trying to address the number of verses as a problem in and of itself. Although, I’m not sure our unwillingness to sing all the verses of this song is due to a short attention span. Rather, it may be because the song just simply isn’t very interesting.
In reality, though, I’m more concerned about the content of the song than the number of verses anyway. Thanks for the input.