Angels We Have Heard on High

Surveying the collection of carols in American hymnody, one might be excused for thinking that Christmas was about angels.

The Christ child gets attention in carols like “O Holy Night” or “O Come All Ye Faithful,” and the magi of Matthew's gospel take center stage in “We Three Kings,” but we just can't get enough of those angels. Whether the heavenly host sings alleluia in “Silent Night,” or angels greet the newborn Christ with sweet anthems in “What Child Is This,” it's rare to find a Christmas carol that doesn't mention them. We just can't get enough of the angels proclaiming Christ's birth to a group of frightened shepherds.

The angels take center stage in the story of the first Christmas in “Angels We Have Heard on High.” In the structure of the song we are neither shepherds receiving the announcement of Christ's birth, nor are we angels declaring the news. We are instead a third party, wandering the countryside and arriving too late to witness the stunning tableau that transpired outside Bethlehem.

Imagine and take it in for a moment, what that spectacle would have been like. The gospel of Luke mentions a group of shepherds in the fields near Bethlehem tending their flocks of sheep, one presumes in connection with the sacrificial system at the Temple in nearby Jerusalem.

On the one hand is the landscape, barren except for the scrub, meadow muffins and a small flock of sheep that dot the area. Scattered through that flock are rough-spun shepherds, some sleeping, some possibly drunk and some watching the scene with whatever emotion sits in the hearts of a shepherd late at night. On the other hand is a heavenly visitor who has just appeared, illumined and illuminating with an unworldly light that burns with a wondrous terror.

Caesar and other rulers concern themselves with halls of power and faraway kingdoms. Whenever they have an important proclamation to share, like the birth of an heir, they send messengers throughout the realm to declare it to the mighty. The angelic messenger is here to declare that God has restored the royal line of David, Israel's golden king.

Fifteen hundred years earlier, Moses went to Pharaoh and declared that God had sent him to save Israel from slavery and genocide, and to deliver his people to their own land. Now the angel is declaring that God is sending a new Moses to free Israel again, but the announcement isn't going to Caesar or even to Herod. It's going to the beneficiaries of that news, a group of social outcasts who can't even give testimony in court.

It's hard to tell which is a bigger shock to the shepherds: that the messiah has been born, or that they're the ones who are receiving the birth announcement.

This is the scene of wild, uncontainable wonder expressed in the opening lines of “Angels We Have Heard on High.” That first verse comes from the shepherds themselves, struck senseless with wonder. They have seen a host of angels and heard those angels, lost in worship, as a heavenly song rolled over the plains and came echoing back from distant mountains.

This is their witness account of what they heard and what they saw, and frankly it is incredible.

By the time we arrive on the scene, it is 2,020 years later. The angels are gone. Their music, however glorious it once sounded, has faded into silence. There is no one left living whose great-grandfather might have been stirred by that song. All that remains is what purports to be a written record of their encounter, and whatever questions we have.

The first verse is the account of the shepherds; the second verse is ours, and it is addressed to the shepherds. Why this celebration? Why this singing? What could you possibly have heard to set you to such celebration?

These are all reasonable questions, whether they are asked as the shepherds rush toward Bethlehem, or two millennia later as we wonder at the story we have heard. Either way, the shepherds' response in the third verse is the only one suitable. They don't argue theology with us. (As for how they feel about it, that should be obvious from the major key and upbeat tempo to the carol.)

Nor do the shepherds even talk about what they think the birth of Jesus will mean for them personally, for their nation, or for the world. Their initial response is simply “Come to Bethlehem and see.”

What do we find there? A baby, certainly; some would say, no more. The remainder of the third verse, and the fourth verse as well, state what the shepherds themselves believed they would find: Christ the Lord, the newborn king, Lord of heaven and earth, laid in a manger.

And woven throughout the song at the end of every verse is the song of the angels itself, rendered in a rolling chorus that rises and falls in rapid tempo, the Latin Gloria in Excelsis Deo, “Glory to God in the highest.”

This, then, is our cue, as visitors to this pageantry. We have missed the angels, and are witness only to the record of what Luke tells us the shepherds found.

Follow the shepherds. Come to Bethlehem. What do you see there?



Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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"Angels We Have Heard On High"

1. Angels we have heard on high Sweetly singing o’er the plain And the mountains in reply Echoing their joyous strains Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo! 2. Shepherds, why this jubilee? Why your joyous strains prolong? What the gladsome tidings be? Which inspire your heavenly songs? Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo!

3. Come to Bethlehem and see Christ, whose birth the angels sing; Come, adore on bended knee, Christ, the Lord, the newborn King. Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo! 4. See Him in a manger laid, Jesus, Lord of heaven and earth; Mary, Joseph, lend your aid, With us sing our Savior's birth. Gloria, in excelsis Deo! Gloria, in excelsis Deo!

'O Come, O Come, Immanuel'

This Sunday is the fourth Sunday of Advent, something I suspect has escaped the notice of many Christians in America.

What we popularly consider the Christmas season technically is the Advent season. Advent is a part of the traditional Christian calendar, beginning four Sundays before Christmas, and ending on Christmas itself. The four Sundays of Advent are marked by lighting candles on a wreath, each with a different theme. The fifth candle, the Christ candle, is lit on Christmas Eve or Christmas. In a liturgical sense the Christmas season does not begin until Christmas itself, and lasts for 12 days before ending on Epiphany, or Twelfth Night.

Fortunately, this doesn't make a difference to any but the stodgiest and most annoying people. Luckily for the rest of us, they have their own churches where they can fret over these things and wait until Christmas before they start singing Christmas carols, without ruining the fun of the season for the rest of us. (You know who you are.)

Advent technically has its own set of carols, such as “Come Thou Long Expected Jesus,” written by Charles Wesley; but for whatever reason these have not received the elevated status of Christmas carols. With some exceptions.

Chief among these exceptions is “O Come O Come Emmanuel.”

Like all other great songs, whether they are hymns, Christmas carols or something else, “O Come O Come Immanuel” is best learned not from a lyrics sheet but by immersion. You grow up hearing it sung as the last leaves fall from the trees and as the sky first grows leaden with winter. You first sing it yourself before you can read, and learn to lose yourself in its somber notes at an age when it still thrills you to watch your breath chill in the air around you.

Some Christmas carols contain lessons on the meaning of Christmas, or they retell a familiar story around the Nativity. Some try to do both. None of that applies in this case. There is no progression of ideas in this carol, no breakthrough or “aha” that it tries to impart. Each verse begins the same way as its fellows, and each verse ends the same way: God, come rescue us. We are suffering here for want of you.

“O Come O Come Immanuel” was not written as much as it was grown — not from among the mountains, fields and forest rivers, nor from the bustle and jostle of our cities. It springs instead from the eternal longing in the human heart to transcend this sullied flesh and to connect with God. It is the prayer of a soul chained to the earth while it longs to dance in fields of glory.

“O Come O Come Immanuel” is not merely a hymn. It is Advent itself, given words and stretched over a frame of music that glides by as regularly as the chimes that call monks to prayer. It is a song that exudes the universal yearning for relief from the tedium of mortality. We are exiled here, we are under sentence of death, we are oppressed, we are weary. Come save us.

And always, in the same cadence that it gives voice to our longing, the carol returns to that same patient reminder: “Rejoice! Rejoice. Immanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.”

So we wait. Thousands of years ago God's people waited in faith for the coming of the promised deliverer, whose arrival we now celebrate from the vantage of a faith rewarded. We also wait for his promised return and the fulfillment of the deliverance that he began when he first arrived. And lastly we wait for him to come more fully into our hearts and change us.

You came into the darkness and you made a difference, Anglicans pray at this time of year. Come into the darkness again.

Even so. Come, Lord Jesus. We are waiting. Amen.


Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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O Come O Come Immanuel

1.O come, O come, Immanuel, And ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here, Until the Son of God appear. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel. 2. O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free Thine own from Satan's tyranny ; From depths of hell thy people save, And give them victory o'er the grave. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel. 3. O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer, Us mortals by thine advent here. Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, And death's dark shadows put to flight. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.

4. O come, Thou Key of David, come And open wide our heav'nly home ; Make safe the way that leads on high, And close the path to misery. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel. 5. O come, Adonai, Lord of might, Who to thy tribes, on Sinai's height, In ancient times did give the law In cloud and majesty and awe. Rejoice! Rejoice! Immanuel Shall come to thee, O Israel.

'Hark the Herald Angels Sing'

If you want a quietly solemn way to end the midnight service, sing “Silent Night.” If you want a song that will transport the congregation to heavenly realms, go with “O Holy Night.” But if you want to get people out of their seats, charged up and ready to move, the Christmas carol you want is “Hark the Herald Angels Sing.”

The secret is in that tune. Written with an upbeat tempo and in a major key, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” is the Christmas carol for a celebration. It's a versatile song, one that can sound heavenly when it's sung acapella or accompanied by a violin; but if you listen to the music, it's just as easy to imagine it played on trumpets like a quartet of heralds announcing a royal arrival. It's virtually impossible to get this song wrong. It can even be played on an organ and still come out inspiring.

We owe “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” to the prolific creativity of Charles Wesley, the credited author of more than 6,000 hymns. Wesley — who, like his brother John and their father, was an ordained minister of the Church of England — is also remembered as the founder of Methodism. The denomination takes its name from a prayer group the Charles Wesley founded while he was attending Christ Church, Oxford, that was known for its intensive, methodological approach to studying the Bible.

Wesley considered hymns, made easier to remember by virtue of being sung, a natural way to teach. He brought his meticulous approach to Bible study to bear so that the lyrics became not just recountings of stories in the Bible or passages of Scripture set to music, but miniature lessons in church doctrine. It would be as though contemporary theologian N.T. Wright put portions of “Surprised by Hope” to music, and then received airtime comparable to popular Christian singers like Chris Tomlin.

Originally published in 1739, "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" underwent some minor changes under the revival preacher George Whitefield, who changed the opening lines of the first verse (from “Hark! how all the welkin rings / Glory to the King of Kings”) and added the familiar couplet that closes each verse. The song originally had the same tune as "Christ the Lord Is Risen Today," but in 1855 musician William H. Cummings adapted Mendelssohn's song to fit the lyrics. For all that, “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” is no exception to the depth of Wesley's writing.

The carol begins by placing the singers in the position of the shepherds of Luke's gospel as the angels appear and announce the birth of Jesus. To modern sensibilities, this a nice place to be. The shepherds are a quaint pastoral touch, and most of us are happy to identify with them in the gospel narrative as the first to hear that Christ has come.

We lose sight of how radical and subversive Luke's gospel is on this point, because the truth is that the shepherds embody the sort of people we usually go out of our way to avoid. People in the first century were discouraged from buying anything directly from shepherds because it was a given that anything a shepherd tried to sell was probably stolen. Even their testimony was inadmissible in the courts. This wasn't a quaint or pastoral group of people; it was an assemblage of crack addicts from under the bridge who aren't allowed to vote.

It's among this group of felons and illiterates that Wesley's hymn places us, as they receive the unexpected announcement from the angels, along with the news that the new king has removed any barriers that may have kept the from God:

Hark! The herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King;
Peace on earth, and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled!”
Joyful, all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies;
With th’angelic host proclaim,
“Christ is born in Bethlehem!”
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

That's standard Bible stuff. In the second verse Wesley starts to teach about the Incarnation.

In Bible studies I've attended or read, I've encountered some pretty surprising attitudes toward Jesus. It seems we like Jesus to be something unreal or unnatural. We see the miracles in the gospels and assume that he had special God powers, and that this is why people followed him; or we catch the doctrine of his sinless nature and assume that life was easy for him, free of temptation, doubt or fear.

This is an old error. Christian orthodoxy teaches that Jesus was not a demigod like Herakles or some other hero of Greco-Roman myth, but as fully human as he was fully God. The Bible makes a point of it. He gets hungry. He gets angry. He gets tired. He cries, and even has full-blown panic attacks. He even cooks food and folds the laundry. Wesley addresses that point of doctrine in Verse 2.

Christ, by highest heav’n adored.
Christ the everlasting Lord!
Late in time behold him come,
Offspring of a virgin’s womb.
Veiled in flesh the godhead see;
Hail th’incarnate deity,
Pleased as man with man to dwell,
Jesus our Emmanuel.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

The proclamation of the angels and the mystery of Christ revealed, Wesley in the third verse turns to the shepherds' response, which is to worship. But here Wesley sneaks in a reference to Easter, as he proclaims that Christ is come to see the end of death:

Hail the heav’nly Prince of Peace!
Hail the Sun of Righteousness!
Light and life to all he brings,
Ris’n with healing in his wings.
Mild he lays his glory by,
Born that man no more may die;
Born to raise the sons of earth,
Born to give them second birth.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

There are two other verses Charles Wesley wrote for the carol that George Whitefield cut. To this day, they are rarely sung. But reading these, you can see firsthand the attention that Charles Wesley gave to Scripture as he wrote:

Come, desire of nations, come,
Fix in us thy humble home;
Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring seed,
Bruise in us the serpent’s head.
Now display thy saving pow’r,
Ruined nature now restore;
Now in mystic union join
Thine to ours, and ours to thine.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

Adam’s likeness, Lord, efface,
Stamp thine image in its place:
Second Adam from above,
Reinstate us in thy love.
Let us thee, though lost, regain,
Thee, the life, the inner man:
Oh, to all thyself impart,
Formed in each believing heart.
Hark! the herald angels sing,
“Glory to the newborn King!”

I hope your church incorporates this Christmas carol into worship at least once this Advent; and if it doesn't, I hope you can find time to enjoy it yourself, around the table with your family, or out caroling with your friends.

“Hark the Herald Angels Sing” is one of the greatest Christmas carols ever written. It's scarcely possible to imagine Christmas without this song.




Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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'O Little Town of Bethlehem'

Christmas is coming, and if you want a deeper worship experience in church, that's good news. In addition to the latest worshiptainment song from the radio, chances are good that you're going to hear actual Christmas carols. And by “hear,” I actually mean “sing.”

Traditional Christmas carols have several advantages going for them that popular and trendy worship songs don't. For starters, because American society is largely influenced by Christianity, people usually are familiar with Christmas carols even if they grew up outside the church. They probably recognize with the tunes, and if they have the lyrics in front of them, they almost certainly can sing along with confidence from the start.

Secondly, unlike many contemporary songs which deal strictly with a reductionist gospel of loving God and receiving forgiveness of sins, most Christmas carols are heavy lifters when it comes to doctrine. They'll carry their own weight in every verse, if not on every line.

Carols like “The First Noël” retell the story of the first Christmas around the supporting cast of shepherds and magi, while “O Come All Ye Faithful” teaches good doctrine on the hypostatic union. “We Three Kings” explores the coming life of Christ down to his death and Resurrection, and “O Holy Night” reflects the gospel call for social justice.

And then there's “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” a four-verse meditation on the Nativity itself.

Written in 1868 by Phillips Brooks, an Episcopal priest from the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia who had visited the Holy Land three years earlier, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” is a song people know of but don't know. Without the lyrics in front of them, most people can sing the first line with great enthusiasm before trailing off into “Da dee da dee dee dum” on Line 2.

If you sang “O Little Town” in church as a child, you probably sang it accompanied by a battered and tuneless organ. When you finished singing, you may even have looked at the carol itself with a measure of pity for all the trauma it had just suffered. Many songs suffer horribly during congregational worship in church, especially when they're sung without enthusiasm and played on an organ.

If your church still uses hymnals you're more likely to find “O Little Town of Bethlehem” than a carol like “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” but there are no guarantees you'll sing it during Advent, on Christmas or during the days leading to Epiphany. It's more of a bench-warmer than a Christmas titan like “Silent Night.”

That's a shame, because this song has what it takes to be a winner. The melody fits comfortably within a one-octave range, and proceeds at a steady, easily managed pace. The carol is lyrically unassuming as well, starting out like the opening montage of a Hollywood movie before delving into its deeper themes.

The first verse of “O Little Town” begins with the camera tracking slowly across a field of stars against the cold night sky before it drops down toward Bethlehem. It's a small town, scarcely more than a village. Many of the houses are hovels, owned by working-class families, although a few are bigger. Winding through the village are roads made of dirt and frozen mud, beaten paths made by the steady footsteps of people and their livestock over the years.

It's night, so as the camera pans through town we see the darkened windows of the houses. The only light comes from the stars and moon above, except for one mysterous source. As our field of vision steadily shifts leftward we perceive an unearthly light, small but steady, coming from the edge of town.

The second verse takes us to a closeup of the manger. Mary is lying on a pile of straw. Her face and her entire body are streaked with dust and dirt, and she is leaden with exhaustion. It's more than 100 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem, and if it weren't for that Roman census, she and her husband wouldn't have made the trip. It's too much to manage when you're nine months pregnant, but it did have one benefit. All that travel made labor a lot faster than it would have been otherwise.

The scene in the manger is perfectly idyllic, the proverbial calm after the storm. A moment ago Jesus was screaming fit to raise the dead, but he has finally settled down. Right now he's nestled in the crook of Mary's arm, latched onto her breast and lazily drinking colostrum as his eyes close and his tiny body unclenches.

In a moment Jesus will fall asleep and then Mary will too, but that won't last long. He's going to wake up a lot the next few nights, and aggravate his parents to no end. That's how it works when you have an infant.

Now the camera pulls back from the manger scene, and pans up toward the heavens again. It's quiet in town. Aside from Joseph, who is trying to decide if he puts too much stock in his dreams, pretty much everyone in Bethlehem is asleep right now.

That’s a shame because the people in the town are missing quite a show. The gates of heaven are open wide, and the angelic host is looking in amazement at the scene below them. While the stars themselves announce the birth of Jesus to anyone who is watching, the angels are lost in worship to the God who is at once too vast to comprehend and yet so tiny and vulnerable that it beggars description.

As rare as it is that we sing “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” it's rarer still we sing the third and fourth verses. That's our loss. The third verse contemplates the unassuming gospel, which by its nature comes silently and without fanfare or acclaim to the meek; rather than with the might and bluster we ourselves often rely on to advance it.

The fourth verse moves to entreaty, asking for our own transformation. Two things I find compelling about this verse: Rather than focusing on the crucified Christ we focus on so much, it welcomes the infant Christ into our lives, and it does so with the title Emmanuel, God-with-us.

Why is this important? I can't speak for others, but too often I take the adult Man of Sorrows for granted. I pause, consider his death for my sins, breathe a quick prayer of contrition and ask for forgiveness, and then I move on, my life largely unchanged. You can't do that with a child.

I became a father 17 years ago. I can think of nothing that upended my life more than the arrival of my daughter on that October afternoon. My wife and I had altered our lives to accommodate one another, but either one of us could and often did manage just fine without the other around when it came to day-to-day living.

I went to work in the morning and came home in the evening, just as I had done before we got married. My wife did the same with her studies and teaching post at graduate school. The big change in our lifestyle after our wedding was that now, when we returned to the apartment for the evening, somebody else would be there. That was it.

Not so when Oldest Daughter arrived on the scene. She required our presence in her life constantly for food, for comfort, for cleaning and for education. If she was hungry, we had to drop everything and feed her. If she was upset, we did our best to comfort her immediately. As soon as she started babbling, we started babbling back to encourage her to speak. Even a trip to the supermarket or to a friend's house was altered fundamentally by her presence. She didn't run the house, but her well-being became our highest priority, even above our own. If she couldn't sleep because of an ear infection, we didn't either.

It's been 17 years now and Oldest Daughter has learned remarkably well to stand on her own two feet. She gets herself food, works her own job, and pursues her own learning at high school and at home. For all that, our lives remain ordered around her needs, her goals and her for her own sake, because we love her. The same is true for her sisters.

In that sacrificial and occasionally selfless devotion to her life and well-being, I see a shadow of the life-upending transformation that Christ can bring when the unassuming infant from the manger arrives in our midst and compels us to place someone else truly first.

That's not just singing a song. That's worship.




Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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The lyrics:

O Little Town of Bethlehem

1. O little town of Bethlehem,

How still we see thee lie.
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting light.
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight.

2. For Christ is born of Mary,
And gathered all above
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love.
O morning stars together
Proclaim the holy birth!
And praises sing to God the King
And peace to men on earth.

3. How silently, how silently

The wondrous gift is given!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of his heaven.
No ear may hear his coming,
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him still,
The dear Christ enters in.

4. O holy child of Bethlehem,
Descend to us, we pray.
Cast out our sin and enter in;
Be born to us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell.
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel.

Fox continues its war on reason

Does Fox News think Christians should be thin-skinned and sensitive to everything that isn't exactly how Fox thinks it should be?

That's what I find myself asking after reading an opinion piece by Todd Starnes, titled "NBC Declares War on Christians." In his opinion piece, Starnes takes umbrage at the Saturday Night Live sketch "Djesus Uncrossed."

Aside from the Saturday Night Live sketch, NBC's offenses include sports blogger Rick Chandler's recent post about Tim Tebow's plans to speak at First Baptist Dallas. Starnes calls this post a "scathing smear." I just read it, and it seems like a fairly accurate description of the controversies centered on the church and the teachings of its head pastor. Don't take my word for it, though; decide for yourself.

Beyond that, the litany of NBC's supposed offenses includes editing the phrase "under God" out from the Pledge of Allegiance during the U.S. Open a year-and-a-half ago, NBC chief medical editor Nancy Snyderman expressing her personal mislike of religion on the "Today" show during a back-and-forth discussion, and of course shows like "Good Christian Bitches" and "The Book of Daniel." Plus there was a piece by Bart Ehrman, published in Newsweek, called "The Myths of Jesus," that lightly details the historical difficulties with the gospel accounts of Jesus' infancy.

By this point in his column, Starnes has got himself worked up pretty well over NBC's supposed war on Christians, and it's obvious he believes that the rest of us feel this way too. I'm sorry to disappoint him, but I just can't muster the outrage. I just don't see it.

For starters, Starnes has done a good job of stacking the deck. He neglects to mention other things that could put NBC in a more favorable light: the annual Christmas-tree lighting, for instance; Christmas specials like "It's a Wonderful Life," which NBC aired this past November. NBC also has aired shows like "VeggieTales" and "3-2-1 Penguins," which couldn't be more overtly Christian if they tried.

On "The Book of Daniel," Starnes notes that Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association hated it and called it anti-Christian bigotry. I should point out that Wildmon also was offended by "All in the Family" and "Charlie's Angels," and worried that Mighty Mouse would encourage kids to snort cocaine. More sensibly, the Rev. Gordon Atkinson said the main offense of "The Book of Daniel" was chiefly that it was a bad show.

Christ means everything to me. I've been a Christian for 25 years, even served God on the missions field in Haiti for a while. Perhaps I should be offended by "Djesus Unchained," but I just can't see it. It's Quentin Tarantino's over-the-top violence they're mocking, not Christ. If anything, the piece shows respect for Jesus. Its goal is to make us laugh by teaming jarringly graphic violence with the man best known in the United States for nonviolence. If anyone should be offended, it's Quentin Tarantino.

Fox loves to play the persecution card. The message they've been hammering for years is pretty simple: Be afraid. There's a war on Christmas. Liberals are attacking God. Our culture, our heritage, our legacy, are all under attack.

Simple truth is, we're not. If it sometimes feels like Christianity is being singled out for ridicule, there are two things to remember. One is that it's easy to overlook the negative portrayals of minority faiths like Islam, because they're not ours and we often don't understand them as well as we think we do. And the second is that because Christianity has provided the dominant underpinning framework for Western thought for as long as it has, it's only natural to use the language and the symbols of Christianity to communicate and to critique Western thought, civilization and art.

I'll also add this: Faith should lead us to reach out to other people and to forge connections with them. If the most it inspires someone to do, is to tell you to be afraid, do yourself a favor.

Change the channel.


Copyright © 2013 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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'o holy night'

I never even heard "O Holy Night" until I was a missionary in Haiti, back in 1993. We sang it once at a school staff Christmas party, accompanied only by guitar, and the song has forever been emblazoned in memory as having the most beautiful tune, best sung by candlelight in temperatures in the mid- to upper 80s.

Last year when Christmastime rolled around, I printed up a list of Christmas carols for us to sing during family devotions. The girls preferred "Do You Hear what I Hear," probably because it's so simple to learn, but I have high hopes that "O Holy Night" will catch on in years to come, even though our New Jersey winters are far colder than in Haiti.

The latest hand-wringing over the war on Christmas

Did you see the article on Christianity Today's web site about the supposed war on Thanksgiving?

If last year's histrionics over the supposed war on Christmas weren't bad enough, now we're supposed to be panic-stricken that Madison Avenue is driving us to forget to be thankful in its push to sell Christmas loot. It's Madison Avenue. Of course they want to make a bigger buck, a faster buck, a greener buck, a more valuable buck, than they did last year. That's the nature of the beast, and the beast grows bigger because we keep feeding it.

It's really quite simple to stop the trend: Stop feeding it. Keep the Christmas spending in hand, don't go hog wild on the gift-giving -- I buy my kids two presents each, and my wife and I exchange one each, and we keep each store-bought gift down to $15 -- and we make a determined effort to keep Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hanukkah together, as a family.

If Christians in America put half the effort into quietly keeping the holidays themselves that they did into screaming that everyone else is celebrating them wrong, we might actually see a redemptive influence on society.

Enough with the war on this holiday or that one. I think God has enough dignity and glory that he's not going to be threatened by the self-indulgence and greed of a few overzealous capitalists.

I wish everyone would just get a grip.

Reviewing 2005 in blogging: a revelation

About six weeks ago, I took this entire blog, had 11 copies bound and printed at the local Staples, and then gave the collection away to family and a few close friends for Christmas.

As Christmas presents, it was probably one of the cheapest ideas I've had in 35 years, but it also was one of the most meaningful, I think. People might not laugh as much as if I had given them season six of "The Simpsons" on DVD, and they might not be on the edge of their seats like if I had given them "Battlestar Galactica,"on but hopefully by the time they're done reading it, they'll know me better.

That collection of my writing, distills into written form a lot of my thoughts, experiences and identity over a period of about 18 months. There's stuff in there that's funny, stuff that's thoughtful, other parts that are informative and some that are merely stupid. It's me. Take me or leave me, enshrine me, mock me, or ignore me, it's me as I am, or at least as I was during that time.

It's been interesting getting the feedback from people as they've received it. Just about everyone loves my piece Elmo and a few people have said they're looking forward to reading it or letting me know that they're enjoying encountering my thoughts. My oldest brother today said he hates it, because every third entry or so he has to put it down and stop to think about what he's read.

It was an eye-opening experience for me to read it as well. One thing that struck me is that I write an awful lot about my faith, particularly as I try to explore some of the deeper currents within Christ. Another thing that struck me is that for someone who claims not to like politics, I wrote an awful lot about that as well, and sometimes pretty harshly when it comes to the GOP.

Believe it or not, I feel bad about that, not because I think my thoughts were wrong, but because I think my attitude was a little too in-your-face and defiant, as though I somehow have to prove I'm not one of "those Christians" on the Religious Right. The chip on my shoulder has been awfully big at times, and it shouldn't be.

I tried reading some of my older journal entries, compiled for the state Division of Youth and Family Services while our foster son was living here. My first thought on reading through them was, "Geez, I was a real dickhead to his biological parents." (I shared this with a friend of mine, and her reaction was, "Yeah, you were. I noticed it at the time but decided it wasn't appropriate to say anything. I figured you were smart enough to figure it out sooner or later on your own.")

I ended up not including them in the volume I gave out at Christmas, because it ended up being too much work to format it correctly, and too upsetting to read through the material again. I need time to process and assimilate it all over again.

Fellow bloggers, take note: The revelation that comes from reading your own writing months later can be painful, but it will be worth it.

an arachnophile christmas

This was the year Christmas at our house was bitten by a radioactive spider.

Although the day had highlights besides the presents, and even though there were presents that generated more enthusiasm than these, there was no doubt that this year, Spider-man did very well at our household. Virtually everyone received at least one present with everybody's favorite wall-crawler on it.

The big winner was Evangeline, who has been carrying the Spider-man torch high enough for three children her age ever since last Christmas, when I received a handful of Spider-man trade paperbacks. Evangeline's favorite present this year was the "Matilda" movie-and-book combo from her New York aunt and uncle, but she spent the entire day wearing a new Spider-man winter hat and a pair of Spider-man slippers. Other web-spinner gifts included a Spider-man place mat for meals, a pair of Spider-man pajamas, and a Spider-man comic book intended to introduce him to young readers.

Rachel fared less handsomely with the Spider-man gifts -- her fan identity is less known that Evangeline's -- but even she got the place mat and a pair of slippers. Thankfully, the slippers are noticeably different. Evangeline's pair, which Rachel bought for her, incidentally, have little Spider-man heads that poke up and look forward from a vantage point above the toes. Rachel got a more basic pair. They're red, have a web design on them, and say Spider-man, but don't make her look like she has little bobbleheads on her feet.

Even Natasha got into the act. When I took Rachel out Christmas shopping a few weeks ago and she picked out the Spider-man slippers for Evangeline, she also glommed onto the idea of buying a pair for her mother. As I said at the time, it's not exactly the sort of present that Natasha would expect, but it was Rachel's gift, so we bought it. Natasha was a good sport about it, and wore them all day yesterday, even though she got another pair from my parents.

Interestingly, I was the only one not to get anything remotely connected to Spider-man. It appears the good folks down at the Marvel Comics merchandising department are a few years behind the times. They seem to have missed out on the fact that it is now socially acceptable for boys to read comic books, and even grown men occasionally get something out of a superhero now and then.

That gender imbalance is something they can work on getting straightened out before next Christmas.

Practicing the fine art of holiday torture

When I was growing up, my parents had a Christmas tree ornament that would chirp like a bird every five seconds. To whoever bought it, this must have been a mildly entertaining amusement. In the hands of myself and my brothers, it was an instrument of the keenest torture.

We would hide the ornament some place near the tree but maddeningly out of sight, plug it in and then take the dog out for a walk. By the time we returned, the entire house would have been turned upside-down in a futile attempt to find the ornament and stop the chirp-chirp-chirping before it drove everyone mad.

Remember how the steady drip of water is said to break the mind of even the strongest prisoner? Compared to Tweety, it's a dip in the kiddie pool. The tolling of the Edgar Allen Poe's bells, bells, bells that fills the city with fear? A light tinkling of brass.

This ornament was the surest way to drive anyone to the brink of madness, and we all used it to that end for many years. At last Tweety took a mysterious trip out of the house in the bottom of the wastebasket and was seen no more. For the first time in years, there was something resembling peace in the Learn household on Christmas Day.

In the aftermath, we all agreed on one important point: That was as bad as it got. There was no Christmas ornament imaginable that could top the bulb for pure irritation.

Fortunately, for those of us who revel in irritating one another, there is good news. The good people at research and development have not stopped producing new Christmas decorations. Whether it's inflatable Santas of nightmarish proportions who threaten to block out the sun, or a singing and dancing Grinch, the opportunities to irritate brothers, to annoy friends and to scar young children for life are better than ever.

Let's start with the inflatable colossus now seen in front yards across the state. There are those who, correctly believing a 900-foot blow-up ornament to be tacky, see no use for the thing. The problem here is not with a snowman big enough to qualify for its own ZIP code, it is a lack of imagination.

Gemmy, which markets the inflatable mammoths, sells no fewer than 47 of them on its Web site. In addition to the Santa and snowman monoliths, the collection features other holiday stalwarts like Scooby Doo and SpongeBob SquarePants. As a special literary treat, the assortment also includes something that once might have been a reindeer before it stumbled upon the secret isle of Dr. Moreau.

A smaller one nicely blocks all view of the street from your front windows. Plant one of the larger models out front, and you'll have complete privacy and may not be able to see the sun. Pesky neighbors, uninvited relatives and bill collectors won't be able to find your house. Best of all, you'll be providing the perfect cover for the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man if he ever comes to town.

For maximum scare effect, set up some lighting behind the beastie — this works especially well with the unfortunate reindeer — and wait until dark. Now as little Timmy comes over to see if your son can play, turn the lights on, give the goliath a push and make the appropriate growl from deep in your throat. Watch as little Timmy jumps into the air and runs around the front yard three times before conking out under the oak tree. This is the life.

True, you can still get fairly traditional Christmas decorations like a light-up snowman, but why would you want to? They're not nearly as much fun.

From time to time, despite your best interventions, someone will make it inside the house. Your children, for example. For maximum damage, and to give them something interesting to tell their therapists in 30 years, it's important to go for the big guns.

First, get the kids as they come in the door with a 5-foot Dancing Grinch. There's no better way to keep the Christmas spirit than to have the Grinch twisting away and crooning the words to his theme song. Better yet, flank the door with the Grinch and his partner in crime, a 5-foot bear who sings your favorite Christmas jingles from hell, including "Winter Wonderland," "Up on the Rooftop" and "It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year."

Next fill the house liberally with more musical toys. For $13, you can get a Holiday Time Sing and Dance Santa who joyfully croons, "I'm Santa Claus" to the tune of "The Wanderer" like a woebegotten Deion Sanders. Other marvels include a singing dog who howls his way through "O Christmas Tree" and "Deck the Halls," and a Coca-Cola polar bear who wails on the saxophone in a way to make even the staunchest Republican yearn for the days of President Clinton's inaugural performance.

Don't worry — even if they play the same song, they're guaranteed to play it at slightly different pitches and slightly different speeds.

Even though everyone knows what will happen, no one can resist the siren call of the buttons that activate the singing. If you're really good with eBay, you might be able to dig up one of the motion-activated talking Christmas trees from the early 1990s. In no time at all, you'll be creating Christmas memories that will last a lifetime.

If you're lucky, you might even survive the experience.

deck the halls

The girls and I set up our Christmas tree Friday while their mother was at work, and E even started decorating it. It now has a baby doll, various Kool Toyz pieces and red plastic monkeys hanging from its branches. For a while it had a Barbie up on top of the tree in place of the angel, but since Barbie fell off, we've settled for a balloon.

I'm inclined to let the girls handle the decorating entirely this year, and leave the traditional ornaments locked up.

'o holy night'

I've only ever sung "O Holy Night" once, but to this day it remains a Christmas hymn that makes me soar.

It was Christmas 1990 in Haiti, when I was teaching at Quisqueya Christian School. We had a staff Christmas party. This was in the tropics, mind you -- about as un-Christmasy as I can imagine. No snow. No evergreen trees. It was hot, dry and dusty as all get-out, and I was a bachelor living more than 1,500 miles from the family I had celebrated Christmas with 20 times previously.

Jim Muchmore was playing his guitar, the kerosense lamps were flickering -- I don't think the power had even been on that night -- and as we sang "O Holy Night," the worship was one of the most tremendous Christmasy experiences I've ever had. That scene is burned indelibly into my mind and I see it again whenever I hear this song.

forget toys for tots, give a real gift

I've had about all I can take of Toys for Tots.

It's not that I think it's a bad organization, nor that I disagree with its mission of distributing toys to disadvantaged children at Christmastime. I'm just sick to death of hearing about it.

It seems like every time I turn around, someone else is collecting toys for Toys for Tots. My employer is collecting them. A real-estate office down the street is collecting them. Today I got a piece of mail from yet another organization that's collecting toys for them.

Is this the most pressing need before us as a society today? You would think from all the hype there is for Toys for Tots at Christmas, that everything is hunky-dory in America today except for some poor kids who aren't getting enough presents for Christmas.

Since this is ostensibly done as a forerunner of the Christmas spirit, let's forget about the fat guy in the red suit for a little bit. Let's look instead at the little boy whose birth Christmas originally was intended to celebrate.

It's easy to forget sometimes amid all the junk that has accumulated around Christmas that it's meant to be a religious holiday. And it's easy to forget amid all the junk that's accumulated around the religion what it is that Jesus Christ was really about.

Aside from a cryptic reference in the Roman historian Suetonis' "Twelve Caesars," and a few other remarks made by other ancient writers like Josephus, the four gospels in the New Testament are pretty much our only source of information about the life of Christ.

Those gospels record Christ as making a pretty radical call on his followers. Unlike the modern Jesus of the political and religious right, the Jesus shown in the gospels didn't push a particular moral philosophy, he didn't champion one economic system over another, and he didn't really back a political party or agenda.

One thing he did ask of his followers: Love one another.

The sort of love Jesus emulated and that his earliest followers strived to uphold wasn't some warm, fuzzy, goodwill-toward-men sort of thing. It was a no-holds-barred kind of love, one that called for putting others' needs ahead of your own. He told his followers to give everything they had for other people, to be involved in their lives, and to care for them in real and tangible ways.

He also called for giving generously to the poor. He actually told one rich young ruler "Go, sell everything you have, and then you can be my disciple," without even once cautioning him to make sure that the poor weren't welfare cheats playing the system.

His rule of love doesn't allow for discriminating between friends, enemies and strangers. Everyone deserves the same level of compassion if you want to be called a follower of Christ.

Worst of all, Jesus never promised people it would be easy. In fact, he said if you follow him closely enough, that it would kill you.

That's a powerful kind of love. It's the sort of love that reached out and took hold of me when I was a teenager on the brink of entering college. I didn't understand at the time what it was I was getting myself into when I committed myself to following Christ, but I've learned. It's been hard, but I've learned.

The lesson was burned deep into my soul last year when my wife and I, following Christ's lead, opened our home to a boy whose parents had failed him so badly that the state had put him into foster care.

I learned how bitter and painful that love can be when my foster son returned to his parents before they were ready, against his caseworker's judgement and against the judgment of social workers familiar with the case, simply because some bureaucrat at DYFS wanted to close the case.

If you ask me, that sort of agony is one hell of a better way to share the joys of the season than dropping off a bunch of toys at a business.

Where's the human connection with Toys for Tots? The most you've got is a tax-deductible purchase, a smile from some overworked employee who's been asked to handle Toys for Tots in addition to his regular duties and some vague, disembodied sense that you made some child somewhere happy for a few minutes on Christmas.

Humbug.

Presents are great, but you know what? They're candy. They may make children happy for a few minutes, but they're not going to do a thing to really help the child in the long run. What good is candy to a child who doesn’t have dinner? What good are toys to children who have no homes to play in? What use are presents to children with no parents to speak of?

I really don't want to hear another word about Toys for Tots, or some other toy drive to collect a bunch of gizmos and widgets that will be broken by New Year's Day.

If you want to really make Christmas a special day for somebody, become a foster parent or adopt a child. If that's too much for you, then at least go to a homeless or battered women’s shelter, and play with the kids.

No, the kids might not get the latest toys to play with, but they'll have something better.

They’ll have love.

a 'christian' christmas carol?

A friend of mine writes:

My daughter is in 4th grade this year, which makes her old enough to join our church's puppet troupe. Overall, I think this is a good thing, as they are a creative group which allows kids to use their talents to express their faith in a positive manner. However, I am a little annoyed at the blurb about their annual Christmas Dinner Theater in the latest church newsletter:

"This year the troupe will be performing an "original" musical entitled "A Christian Christmas Carol." The story takes place in Iowa where Scrooge finds out the REAL meaning of Christmas."

Excuse me, but isn't that already the point of Dickens' novel?

I have to admit, just the idea of a "'Christian' Christmas Carol" makes me want to barf. Dickens was writing against the exploitation the rich often had of the impoverished in industrial England, a situation too often seen elsewhere in history and the world. You could view it as a works gospel, if that's how you choose to see it, but it also stresses the importance of community and our obligation to other people, an aspect of the gospel often ignored by the evangelical community today despite its prevalence in the teachings of Jesus, James and others.

Chances are the bulk of the people seeing the play already know What Christmas Is Really About™ and are just going to feel warm and fuzzy seeing the same basic message hammered home again. There's more meat in the original story as Dickens tells it than that, but I suppose it doesn't make us feel as comfortable as the other way.

Santa and the True Meaning of Christmas

I get a headache trying to figure this out: There is actually a town that doesn't want Santa Claus to light the Christmas tree, because he's too religious.

Santa Claus and the entire accompanying Christmas package -- trees, presents, wreaths, lights, the North Pole and those his many elves -- are so much cultural baggage. It has nothing to do with the story of the Christ child of Bethlehem, of angels appearing to shepherds , and wise men following a star.

Christmas is indisputably a religious holiday, but like Mardi Gras in New Orleans, over the years it has come unmoored from its religious origins. It's become a cultural holiday like Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July, built more or less around the idea of charitable giving and spending time with family.

Step into churches on Christmas Eve and you'll hear parents enjoining their children to remember the True Meaning of Christmas,™ and many other religious folk who want to jettison Santa because he steals the thunder from the Christ child.

I've known Jews who take their children to see Santa and I've interviewed Hindus who celebrate Christmas. There are probably even Muslims who do the same, though the imam I interviewed about that five years ago no doubt would deny any such notion vigorously and indignantly.

I wish the anti-Santa parade and the anti-Christmas parade would march into the same room in Toledo, Ohio, where they can merrily ruin their own Christmases and allow the rest of us to keep the holiday as we wish.

Not that I'm opinionated.

Popular stand-ins for Santa Claus

When I was little, we were too poor for Santa Claus to come to our house. We didn't get Father Christmas either -- we had to settle for his grandson.

On a serious note, I discovered in Haiti that in Port-au-Prince, where the boujwa live, that they have Papa Noel, or Father Christmas. Out in the provinces, he's Tonton Noel, or "Uncle Christmas."

Of course, when I was there, during the embargo the big phrase was "Tonton Noel pap vin paske annbago" (Santa's not coming because of the embargo).

Christmas vacation in Indiana

Here it is, the first day of the last year in the millennium. Well, not really, since the millennium technically ends Dec. 31, 2000, but no one's going to consider that next New Year's Eve.

As I write this, it's about 11 a.m. Friday on our last whole day in Indiana with my brother, sister-in-law and their son, Caleb. I'm sitting in the back room of their house in, freezing my fingers and my tucish.

Natasha and I arrived in Chicago, Ill. On Dec. 24 about 2:30 or so, nearly two hours later than we had been told we would. The plane had some mechanical difficulties in New Hampshire, and so it was a couple hours late picking us up.

The flight in was pretty uneventful; Natasha slept about an hour of the trip; I dozed for about half an hour, and then read Piers Anthony's "Volk," a book of historical fiction set in Europe during World War II.

I'm kind of disappointed in it, and regret buying a copy for Popper for Christmas, since I doubt he'll enjoy it any more than I have. The book details a triad of relationships among a pilot in the Royal Air Force, his Quaker fiancee and his German college buddy, who also happens to be a Nazi without buying into some of the party's more monstrous beliefs and practices. He's anti-Semitic, but not nearly as much as his cohorts in the Nazi party.

So in that sense, it's interesting, because it breaks some of the stereotypes we have of different groups; the Nazis weren't all evil (some, such as Oskar Schindler, tried save Jews from the death camps) and the Allies had a few dark secrets of their own that history books usually gloss over, like the concentration camps we put the Japanese in for the duration of the war.

Anthony also gives a lot of detail to the aviation battles. You can tell he researched the combat techniques and understands the aviation machinery of the time, and that he has some familiarity with how the Quakers run their rescue missions. (He was raised a Quaker himself).

All the same, I'm disappointed. While those things are good and lend the book some believability, and it's interesting to see the way he incorporates actual battles like Dunkirk into the plot, there's too much that's lacking. He hints at espionage and turncoats, spies and machinations, he never really does anything with it, at least as far as I've read so far. If I don't read the book today, or tomorrow on the flight home, I probably will never finish it.

Anyway, Rhonda and Caleb were waiting for us at the airport and brought us here to Indiana, where we've had a whopping good time. We went to a late-night service Christmas Eve at a nearby Methodist church, since Ward and Rhonda's own church didn't have a midnight service. (They did have a Christmas morning service that we skipped.)

I don't remember much of the service. The organist played the Christmas hymns too slowly for my taste, and they had a choral cantata that probably was decent if you're into those things. I did a little writing on the back of the church bulletin that turned out decently, about the magi and their expectations when they followed the Star of Bethlehem.

After the service ended, we came back home and put Caleb to bed before we got all the presents out. Rhonda's preference is to sort the presents by person so each person gets to be in the spotlight for a while. That was different than we did it as children, but it worked well. Ward and Rhonda had bought so many presents we actually had to make two trips to a neighbor's house, where they had stashed gifts for Caleb, including a 24-inch 18-speed mountain bike that he has ridden nearly every day since.

I'm not sure what Caleb makes of Santa Claus. He's at the age I think he knows something is up, but he still wants to believe that Santa is for real. At any rate, he came out of room around 11 p.m. and nearly caught us in the act of putting Santa presents under the tree.

Apparently, the lad woke up at 3:30 Christmas morning. Ward and Rhonda were able to keep him down for a while, but finally at 5 a.m., we all got up and opened our gifts. It was nice to see Caleb so excited about the gifts he received, and there were a lot of them, but I still decided that when Nastasha and I have children and they wake up early for Christmas, I'm going to have them call Uncle Ward and talk with him before anyone gets up.

Caleb has enjoyed a lot of the presents he got, such as the mountain bike, apparently the only thing he asked Santa for. But Herb, Caleb's Uncle Dutch, got him a functional children's tool set that includes a router, drill press, table saw and a few other items. Caleb played with that like mad on Christmas the next couple days. He's been busy the past two days with a tornado-maker Ward and Rhonda bought him at a science museum in Chicago. Attached to two two-liter bottles, the device's inside spirals so that water pouring from the upper bottle starts to swirl as it enters the lower bottle, with the result that it can create some impressive-looking whirlpools.

Caleb's a pretty cool kid. I'm impressed with how well-balanced he is, considering he's changed homes four times, twice after leaving homes where he was firmly entrenched. He seems to hold a few things inside at times, but he's outgoing and acts a lot like any other child his age. He emulates Ward, which has been fascinating to watch. And Wardloves Caleb so much you never would be able to tell from his behavior that Caleb isn't Ward's biological son.

It's been a tremendous visit in many ways since I've had a chance to see a whole new side of Ward (and Rhonda) that I never saw before. Fatherhood suits him; I hope I live up to the role as well as he is.

Caleb seems to like me too; we've gone out and done a couple things ourselves when Ward was at work and wasn't available. We went biking together on Saturday, and on Sunday, he went with me in Ward's truck to get some things from the store, including a "Prince of Egypt" soundtrack I bought at Kmart. We've been roughhousing a bit together too, mostly good, old-fashioned rassling in the living room, although we've also done some funky weird dances to "Through Heaven's Eyes," a danceable song by Jethro, high priest of Midian, in Prince of Egypt.

I'm taking it easy today since Caleb starts school on Monday and Ward and Rhonda want him to have wound down for that.

Oh yeah. Caleb also got a present that's been used more by Natasha so far than by Caleb. Ward and Rhonda gave him a virtual dog that he named Dips and Rhonda mistyped as Dipsa. Natasha has not left Dipsa's side since then, or the other way around. She even took Dipsa to Michigan City with us when we visited the Yeohs.

The other day I picked up the thing to see what the fascination was, started pressing buttons and was pretty impressed with myself for figuring out how to feed Dipsa dog biscuits and comb and pet him. After a few more buttons, Dipsa's name flashed up on the screen, and then again and again. So I asked Natasha why, and she nearly went ballistic. It turns out I had been yelling at the dog, and ruined its state of near-total happiness that she had been building up all day.

Anyway, we've been here in Indiana all week, and plan to leave tomorrow if the snow doesn't block us in. Ward said there's about a foot coming in tonight. That could delay our departure, and could by extension cause problems with my attending the reorganization meeting in Princeton Township on Sunday, which reminds me that I need to call Michelle and make sure she needs me to cover that.