Reality Amidst the Familiarity

Friday December 17 2021

The Moderator of the General Assembly considers the message of Christmas carols

At a latitude of almost 59 degrees north, we don’t get a great amount of light in Tankerness in December.

That is probably why the annual St Lucy service in St Magnus Cathedral in early December is much looked forward to. Until calendar reforms, St Lucy’s feast day coincided with the winter solstice – the shortest day of the year.

It is a festival of light. In keeping with the tradition followed by our Scandinavian neighbours and to the singing of Santa Lucia in Norwegian, a local schoolgirl enters the darkened cathedral with her attendants. She is dressed in white and wears a crown of candles on her head. (Health and safety don’t permit the real thing, but the effect is much the same.) A poem about a thousand Christmas lights is read, and after the service the Christmas Tree presented to Orkney by the people of Hordaland in Norway is lit.

The symbolism of light coming into a darkened world is powerful. A young person speaking about light brings a potent message of hope. The feeling among the many people who gather is that the Christmas season has arrived.

It is often the first opportunity to sing the familiar Christmas hymns and carols. I am someone who loves to sing and to praise, and to hear many voices joining in. But I sometimes wonder whether familiarity or inaccurate or misleading lyrics can blur the fundamental and joyful message of Incarnation.

Confession time. When, in Primary 2 or 3, I learned the words of verse 4 of O Come, All Ye Faithful!, my mental picture of 'Word of the father' was as if Joseph had posted a birth notice outside the stable! Entirely my own misunderstanding, although in mitigation, I plead that John chapter 1 is not easily comprehended by a six or seven-year-old.

But what about words that are a misrepresentation or at least have no biblical authentication? Cecil Francis Alexander writes: “Not in that poor lowly stable, with the oxen standing by.” Search the familiar passage from Luke chapter 2 and you won’t find a reference to any oxen. Three Kings from the Orient? No definitive number is given by Matthew, nor is there any indication that those travelled from the east and who studied the stars had royal rank.

Maybe these examples don’t matter. They may add harmless colour to an already vivid narrative. But many carols, which we learn in childhood, can conjure up images of God, of Jesus and of faith which, through annual repetition, stick with us and can obscure the full wonder of the Christmas story.

Consider these lines:

“The cattle are lowing, the Baby awakes,
But little Lord Jesus no crying he makes.
I love you, Lord Jesus, look down from the sky.”

We can let the reference to the cattle pass, but if, as we believe, Jesus was fully human, does any parent of a new-born child think that there would be no crying when the baby awakes? And if the notion is nourished of a God up there in the sky, looking down on us from above, we miss out on the wonder of a God, unbounded by time or space, or the reassurance of
Emmanuel – God with us.

Does it matter? After all, I can be as moved as anyone listening to an infant choir singing Away in a Manger, and will no doubt be so moved again this Christmas. Maybe the answer, above the Christmas clamour, is to recapture the magnificent reality amidst the familiarity:

“Lo! within a manger lies
He who built the starry skies”

And to loudly celebrate and proclaim the “Word of the Father, now in flesh appearing” and
so “Come, let us adore Christ our Lord”.

Lord Jim Wallace of Tankerness is Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of
Scotland in 2021/22.

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