Carols

Old Christmas Carols are some of the things that help us to keep Christ in the center of this season.  We tend to start playing them in our home shortly after July.  I really like Christmas music.  Sometime during the season we will gather around a piano and sing as well.

Pay attention to the lyrics.  Often these songs are so familiar that the message is lost.  It helps to read them as poetry.  The themes of the carols are deep.  For example “In the Bleak Midwinter,” deals with the reality that Christ was fully God and fully man worthy of the worship of Angels.  It then uses that foundation to simply share the Gospel, our proper response to the wonder of God’s gift.  (Hymn lyrics from HymnSite.com)

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
in the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, heaven cannot hold him, nor earth sustain;
heaven and earth shall flee away when he comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
but his mother only, in her maiden bliss,
worshiped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
if I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
yet what I can I give him:  give my heart.

Christina G. Rossetti, 1830-1894