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During the Advent, or Christmas, season, I enjoy hearing and singing Advent hymns, or Christmas carols, which celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I always look forward to this every year. However, there are three Christmas carols which I do not appreciate hearing and which I will not sing.
Those who regularly read the Abbeville Institute will understand my reasons and their context. However, for those who may not I refer them to the blog "The Antebellum South in the Reformation Tradition" by Johathan Harris for the context of my blog which follows.
The first and worst of these is “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The author was from Portland, Maine, but later moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was both a Unitarian and an outspoken abolitionist. When the War Between the States came, his eldest son, Charles Appleton Longfellow, enlisted in the Union army and served as a second lieutenant in Company G of the 1st Massachusetts Cavalry. He suffered a severe wound in the Mine Run Campaign on November 27, 1863, which took him out of the rest of the war. His grief-stricken father was moved, it being that time of year, to compose the Christmas carol as a result. The following verses stated his sentiments:
Then from each black, accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
The fact that this Christmas carol is blatantly anti-Southern is one of the main reasons that I will not sing it.
The second Christmas carol which I will not sing is “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” by Edmund Sears, who was the pastor of the Unitarian churches in Wayland and Lancaster, Massachusetts. He composed the song in 1849. It expressed anti-war sentiments following the Mexican War, which was strongly opposed in New England. In fact, only one regiment from the entire region served in that war. The third and final verses of the carol state this clearly:
But with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring; –
Oh hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing!...
For lo! the days are hastening on
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever circling years
Comes round the age of gold;
When Peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.
The third Christmas carol which I will not sing is "O Holy Night." The lyrics were originally written in French as a Catholic hymn by Placide Chappeau de Roquemaure and the music was written by Adolphe Charles Adams. Chappeau was a Catholic, but left the church and became a socialist shortly after writing the carol, which was originally titled "Cantique de Noel." Adams was a Jew and, as such, did not believe in the deity of Christ. It was sung in the Catholic churches in France for only a short time until news about its two authors caused it to be denounced by the Catholic church as, in the words of Ace Collins, "unfit for church services because of its lack of musical taste and 'total absence of the spirit of religion.'" It then ceased to be sung by those churches in that country. It was then found and translated into English as "O Holy Night" by John Sullivan Dwight, a Unitarian minister, transcendentalist, and abolitionist from Boston, Massachusetts. The following verse from that song shows why he sympathized with the song:
Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother;
And in His name all oppression shall cease.
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we,
Let all within us praise His holy name.
So, if you hear Southerners singing any of these songs, let them know the truth about them and how they are denigrating to their own heritage as Southerners.
Sources:
Justin Taylor, “The True Story of Pain and Hope Behind ‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.’” The Gospel Coalition. www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor-the-story-of-pain-and-hope-behind-i-heard-the-bells-on-christmas-day/
National Park Service, “Longfellow, Slavery and Abolition,” Longfellow House Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, Cambridge, Massachusetts. www.nps.gov/long/learn/historyculture/longfellow-slavery-and-abolition.htm
National Park Service, “Charles A. Longfellow in the Civil War,” Longfellow House Washington’s Headquarters National Historic Site, Cambridge, Massachusetts. www.nps.gov/articles/charles-longfellow-in-the-civil-war.htm
Ace Collins, Stories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2001.