Sunday School: Christmas Carols Analyzed

This week, our Sunday School class read some classic Christmas carols and asked: do these accurately reflect what we as Christians believe? Given that the intent of the Christmas carol is to communicate something about Christ, and usually in the context of worship, it would seem to make sense that there be a fairly decent level of theological accuracy to the Christmas carols we sing. However, we more often get caught up with a pretty tune, or some kind of nostalgic attachment to the hymn and not consider the message being conveyed (this happens a lot with hymns generally, not just Christmas carols). So this week we took apart a couple of carols.

We didn’t get to as many as hoped, but if you are familiar with Christian theology (i.e., what Christians believe), this is not a difficult exercise to practice on your own. Just find the words to Christmas carols and read them as poetry. Ask yourself, “what is this saying about Jesus? About God? About the Incarnation? About the purpose of Jesus coming to earth? About what the birth of Christ means for me as a Christian, or the church as a whole?”

For the sake of brevity, I’ll link to the words of each hymn we looked at, and then just provide some notes to give you an idea of the discussion. As usual, feel free to use the comments if you want to add to the discussion.

We Three Kings

Let’s just get the historical accuracy issues out the way first. Matthew’s Gospel does not specify the number of “magi” [Greek: magoi] that visited Jesus. The term magos denotes a wise man who would be skilled in astrology (which back then would have incorporated aspects of forecasting based on the stars, but also what we would know as astronomy), and science. In a way you could consider them first century Middle Eastern scientists. I’m not sure where the idea of them being “kings” came from, but it’s possible they worked within a royal household (or various royal households), and had access to riches. Who knows, perhaps their kings supplied them with the gifts they brought? This is speculation. What we do know is that these men were well-educated and highly respected (in contrast to the shepherds), and that they brought three important and symbolic gifts. Also, while they are traditionally given the names of Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar, these are not in the biblical record. Oh, and finally, it’s not certain exactly when they visited Jesus. We like to picture them at the manger, but all we know for sure is that they visited “after Jesus was born… in the days of Herod the king.” Given that, as a result of their visit, Herod ordered the slaughtering of all male children aged 2 and under, it’s possible Jesus was no longer an infant at the time. Okay, now to the hymn.

Verse 1: Scene setting. Kings traveling from the Orient following a star to visit Jesus. Completely in accord with Matthew 2:1-2. “Field and fountain, moor and mountain”–and probably a lot of desert too! Perhaps a bit of poetic license here to get across the idea they’ve come a long way.

Chorus: Star with royal beauty leading them to “Thy perfect Light.” Is the suggestion here that the star’s light is perfect, or is the star leading them to another Light (i.e., Jesus, the Light of the World)? I would prefer the latter over the former. While the star was certainly a sign from heaven, I wouldn’t want to focus too much attention to it at the expense of Christ.

Verse 2: Gold–the symbol of majesty. I wonder if we have echoes of Philippians 2:6-11 here, where Christ left the realms of glory, humbled himself as a man, died on the cross, and then was exalted, receiving the name above all names. He had a crown in heaven prior to the incarnation, and he will claim that crown again at his resurrection. Since every knee will one day bow to him (both those destined for glory, and those destined for eternal punishment), he is certainly “Lord of all.”

Verse 3: Frankincense–symbol of worship. The Bible speaks of our prayers being offered up to God as like incense before His throne. Our worship is sweet smelling to Him. Jesus is here the recipient of worship, as one who is divine and therefore worthy to receive it.

Verse 4: Myrrh–a spice used for burial to help counter the smell of the dead body. Here it signified Christ’s death. I like Christmas hymns that look beyond the manger to the cross, the tomb, and the resurrection. That was why he came, after all: to die and rise again to pay the penalty for the sins of his people.

Verse 5: The resurrection. No good Christian hymn can leave Christ dead in the tomb. The Resurrection is the basis of our hope. Paul says that if Christ wasn’t raised, we Christians are to be pitied most.

With the historical caveats, this is a good hymn.

It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

I’m not going to go verse-by-verse through this one. We read through it and made some telling observations. First, how often does it speak of Christ? How often does it actually speak of the Incarnation? What about the purpose for Christ’s coming? How about… an explicit reference to God (“heaven’s all-gracious King” is a bit too vague, sorry)?? This hymn is actually about angels with harps of gold delivering a message of “peace on earth, goodwill to men” to a world full of weary and broken people. Lovely. But what is the basis for this message? Just because the angels say “Peace! Goodwill!” that doesn’t mean everything’s okay. This hymn would seem to have us believe that. What is our hope in? The angelic message? In a world heaving with sin, how can there be peace and goodwill unless that sin is dealt with? The angelic message doesn’t deal with this. No Christ, no God, no manger, no cross, no burial, no resurrection…

Sorry, but this may be nice poetry, but on just about every level, in terms of Christian theology, it fails. Big time.

Away in a Manger

We were running short on time with this, but we decided it was okay. I don’t like the fact that it’s all “little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay,” and not more “majestic Lord of Glory humbling himself to be born in a lowly manger.” The most troubling line in this is “But little Lord Jesus no crying he makes.” Did the baby Jesus cry? One argument is that, because he had no sin, he didn’t selfishly demand to be fed, or have bad dreams, and whatever other reasons a baby might cry. But Scripture does tell us that he grew “and became strong, increasing in wisdom” (Luke 2:40), so while he had no sin, he would have still needed to physically and mentally mature. As an infant, he would not yet have learned to verbalize his needs to his mother other than by crying. So it wasn’t sinful for baby Jesus to cry. Indeed, the suggestion that Jesus didn’t cry smacks of the ancient heresy of Docetism, especially popular among the various Gnostic groups. Docetism essentially teaches that material things are sinful, and spiritual things are good. Therefore, if Jesus was pure and sinless, he couldn’t have been material–he must have been spirit, and only appeared to be flesh-and-blood. Hence he wouldn’t have had any real physical needs.

We decided this one was okay, but not the best.

That was all we had time for, but we also got into a good discussion on Christian music generally. What makes music “Christian”? What kind of songs are acceptable as worship? What about instrumental music? Can a piece of music be Christian if there are no words to it? I could ramble for hours on this, but I think I’ll save it for a blog article sometime in the future.

Program Note: There will be no Sunday School next week or the week after. Our Sunday School will resume again on Sunday, January 8th, 2012. This means there will be no “Sunday School notes” blog for the next couple of Mondays. In fact, I plan to change the day I post Sunday School notes from Monday to Tuesday, starting the week of Jan 8th.