Nathan asked a great question in the comments a few posts below...
"I also wonder why we don't celebrate the incarnation and sing the good, theologically strong carols all year round."
Made me reflect on the difference between christmas carols and songs on the incarnation. I like both and have written both but I think there is a difference. Christmas carols invite us to be in the moment of the incarnation. Using words like 'hark' and the present tense ('Joy to the world, the lord IS come') they take us back to the time (night? romantic me likes to think so!) that Jesus was born and help us experience the wonder of it. Non-carols speak about the incarnation as something that has happened, rather than something that is happening right at this moment.
So Nathan, I don't think we sing carols all year round because it feels silly. Jesus is not being born right now (nor is he on Dec 25th, of course, but it's easier to pretend he is when we're surrounded by nativity scenes) so let's not sing as if there's a baby in front of us.
Everyone loves a baby. I love the idea that God became one and a woman got to hold him and nurse him and rock him to sleep (women throughout the ages have basked in this idea - in a very maternal and slightly manipulative way!). But I think a mature understanding of the incarnation goes a good bit further than baby Jesus. We need to grasp both the wonder and the horror of having God with us. We need more songs that do that.
I know of churches which don't have a Christmas service but use Christmas carols at various times during the year. Initially jarring, but feels natural after a while. The rhetorical effect of being invited into the moment of Jesus' birth still works, especially if you haven't got a cultural association of that event with a specific day.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I can't figure out how much I think that is a facetious response to my feelings on Christmas. I think nominating an arbitrary date to celebrate about 8 chapters of the New Testament is kind of odd - particularly when in the scheme of things it's probably not even in the top 3 significant parts of the Lordship of Christ - though what they are I don't know... I would think death, resurrection, ascension would beat out incarnation... though none would have happened without it...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I agree with the "mature understanding of the incarnation" being more than a little baby, and I'd like to think that some of the more "mature" Christmas carols make that jump. We sang "How Can This Be" at Mitchelton as a carol this year... I just think if you were the carol you'd hate to be pigeon holed like that.
I don't get why we only sing carols at Christmas. I don't get why we put so much emphasis on Christmas either.
ReplyDeleteI struggle to find the balance of how much emphasis to actually put on different aspects to our Christmas celebration.
I used to sing my son to sleep with Hark the Herald Angels sing, because I love the words. Now he loves Silent Night and tries desperately hard to sing along, so I think we'll be singing that for a while.