For many, it is now officially time to begin preparing for Christmas. Commercials are running on television. Inflatables are showing up on lawns. The city is putting up lights. The snowplow has already been out once, clearing the roads in the town where I live. It won’t be long before we start hearing Christmas carols on the radio. But I started thinking about Christmas in July because I was working on a new Christmas book. It was a little daunting to think about Christmas when the temperatures soared into the 80s and 90s.
I doubt I will get much sympathy (or praise) from my friends who live in warmer climates. Or from Mary and Joseph, for that matter. One of my favorite Christmas carols claims that Jesus was born in “the bleak Mid-winter” when “frosty wind made moan.” But the climate in Bethlehem was closer to San Francisco’s than to the Midwest’s.
I decided that the best way to deal with the challenge was to start listening to Christmas carols right away. I worried that it would feel artificial. Like visiting one of those Christmas-themed stores that stay open all year. Or tuning into one of those all-Christmas-all-the-time cable channels. I wondered how much of my sense of Christmas is merely atmosphere. The honest answer is that there is often more ambiance than ethos to our notion of the Christmas spirit. Much of what makes Christmas feel like Christmas is a combination of atmosphere, environment, and trimming.
Nevertheless, I felt something happen in my heart as I listened. It wasn’t just the air conditioning. It was undoubtedly the music. I am not saying that I was suddenly transformed, and like Scrooge, began to radiate benevolence towards everyone I encountered. Yet as I listened to carols, I was struck by the reality and the importance of Jesus’ Nativity. This was especially true of A Savior from on High. A lullaby carol by Stephen Paulus, based on a text by the Elizabethan composer William Ballet.
It’s not as though I had never given the incarnation or the Virgin birth any thought before. They are fundamental elements of the redemption story. Yet I was a little surprised by my reaction to this particular song. I had always viewed lullaby carols as somewhat odd. Why place so much emphasis on the baby Jesus? This song worked on my imagination.
Lullaby carols highlight the humanity of Christ. They remind us that he was so fragile and vulnerable that he had to be fed and carried. He needed protection from his enemies. Their lyrics underscore the duality of his nature. They contrast the irony of his real identity with the humbleness of his position. Jesus was the infant king who had come to give us life, but for whom death awaited. Lullaby carols also help us see Jesus through Mary’s eyes. He was Mary’s joy as well as her sorrow. As Gillian Leslie has put it, “the gentle charm of such songs conceals the sword of Simeon” (see Luke 2:35).[1]
I see something of what Leslie describes in A Savior from on High. As the piece begins, the female voices in the chorus sing the opening phrase. The men join in, and the first statement resolves on a slightly discordant note. It is both pleasing and a little unsettling. There is an edge of sorrow in the melody. I was surprised to hear the male voices take the lead in singing the actual lullaby for the first time. I suppose I am reading too much into it. It may only have been a practical result of the song’s performance by a mixed choir. Maybe it was a simple matter of balance. But I’d like to think that this is a subtle nod to the fact that Jesus came for all people. As the angel declared to the shepherds, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people” (Luke 2:10).
After the opening lullaby, the voices share the burden of the song’s chief message. They remind us that this child is also a Savior. They share the lullaby until the end of the piece, when a single, female voice rises hauntingly above the rest. It is the voice of Mary, rocking her child to sleep. The child is hers and, in a way, he is not. He is her “sweet babe.” But he is also the Savior, “given from on high to visit us that were forlorn.”
The Mary pictured in this song is not the icon that most of us know. It is Mary, the peasant mother, who is little more than a child in her teens. She knows the babe’s true identity. Mary knows something about what he has come to do. He has come, as the song’s title proclaims, to be the Savior of the world. But at this point, she doesn’t know how he will accomplish his task. This is Mary, the mother, quietly rocking her baby to sleep like so many other women before her. This is Mary before she has heard Simeon’s mixed blessing that will cut her heart: “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 2:34-35).
The day will come when Mary will watch as her son bleeds out on the cross. She will hear as Jesus points out the beloved disciple John. He will say, “Woman, here is your son.” He will tell John, “Here is your mother” (John 19:26-27). These words are not a disowning. Far from it. But they do reflect a kind of distance. It is not unlike what every mother feels when she must share her child with someone else. What mother hasn’t felt a stab of grief while watching their child recede from view? They move out of the house or go off to college. When they walk the aisle at the wedding, the tears are not all tears of joy. The difference, here, is that Mary must share her child with the whole world. For that is why he has come.
Mary must have realized what every mother eventually does. The sweet babe in her arms, although her son, was not really hers to possess. At the same time, the words the angel first spoke in annunciation proved to be true for Mary. God did indeed show her favor in a way that no other woman has experienced or will again. For the briefest time, a matter of months only, Mary was a kind of tabernacle. One that contained the glory of God in bodily form.
This, it seems to me, is the lesson of the best lullaby carols. They do not exalt Mary. They celebrate the honor that God granted to her by enabling her to serve Christ in this singular way. Such carols are also a demonstration of Christ’s humility in submitting to this service. He was born of a woman and born under the law“to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship” (Gal. 4:4-5).
I admit that these thoughts did not come to me all at once upon my first hearing of Mary’s lullaby. It was something that I had to dwell on. I listened repeatedly during the steaming months of July and August, then into the chillier winds of fall. I am still thinking about it. Perhaps I would still have seen all this if I had waited until December to listen. But by then, I wonder if it would have merely seemed like background music to me.
I am afraid that what we call Christmas spirit is hardly more than atmosphere. I realize that Christmas lullabies are not everyone’s taste. As my father used to say when I grumbled about the music he liked, “De gustibus non disputandum est.” It means, “In matters of taste, there can be no disputes.” Most of us are not in the mood for Christmas carols in July. The Nativity of our Lord, on the other hand, is something else. Ambiance is merely manufactured. String the lights, light the candles, and maybe we can celebrate Christmas in July after all. But the truth of the Nativity of Christ is something more. We ought to meditate on it throughout the year. It is theological, not seasonal, and our salvation depends upon it.
[1] Gillian Leslie, “At the Heart of Christmas: A Theology of The Christmas Carol,” The Living Pulpit 4, no. 4 (December 31, 1995): 9.
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