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Last week, I was a guest on World magazine’s excellent weekly radio show The World and Everything In It. Host Joseph Slife asked me about my favorite Christmas song and my favorite Christmas recording. I chose “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” as my all-time favorite Christmas song and the more obscure “Christ Is Born” as my all-time favorite Christmas recording.

Here is a link to the segment(which features the music, not just my talking about these songs), a downloadable mp3, and below is the transcript.

“O Come, O Come, Emmanuel”

Over the years, the Christmas song that continues to move me is one of the oldest Christmas songs that we still sing in our churches today, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” I believe it goes all the way back to the 12th century. It has a very mournful melody. But then there is that lyrical command of the chorus to “Rejoice!”

The song is sort of a bridge between Advent and Christmas. Advent being the time of anticipation as we are mourning in the exile, knowing that God’s full promises have not been completely fulfilled, and yet we also know that because of the birth and life and death and resurrection of Christ that God has already accomplished our salvation and we are awaiting Christ’s return and we are waiting for the time when joy really will flood the world as other Christmas songs remind us.

I also enjoy the second verse of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” which is not as often sung… the verse that says, ‘O come, Thou Dayspring, come and cheer our spirits by Thine advent here; Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, and death’s dark shadows put to flight!” I love the fact that Jesus did not only defeat sin and evil… He also conquered the greatest enemy to God’s good creation, which is death itself. And so, this is a Christmas song that for me is a bridge to all the rest of the story that the Gospels give us, where we go from the wooden manger to the wooden cross and then the empty tomb and then Christ’s ascension and the anticipation of His return.

One of the reasons I enjoy this song so much is because it not only allows us to go back and put ourselves in the shoes of the first-century Jews, so to speak, who were awaiting the arrival of the Messiah as they mourned in lonely exile as the song says, but it also allows us to take that quality of anticipation from the first-century Jews and to have that again even now as we look over the evil in our world, as we see the evidence and the effects of the curse that still lingers and know that even though Christ has come and that the world is being made new, we are like the first-century Jews, still in a sort of exile as we await Christ’s return and await for Him to make good on all the promises that God has made in His covenant.

“Christ Is Born”

Another favorite Christmas song of mine is one that is a bit more obscure. It is a song called “Christ Is Born.” Like “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel,” it was originally written in Latin by the choir director at the Sistine Chapel, Father Domenico Bartolucci. And Ray Charles of the Ray Charles singers talks about how he went to see Father Bartolucci in his apartment, and he says that he had a big Ampex tape machine and a box of tapes. He brought out a tape of a gorgeous piece he had written and he played it for the singers and the words were in Latin.

Later Perry Como decided that he wanted to record it. So there was an English adaptation of the song that was produced called, “Christ Is born” and Perry Como used it on various Christmas shows that he did.

The version that I have really grown to love is one done by The Carpenters in 1978. There is a very understated majesty to this song. I really like the line that says, “Hear him crying in the manger,” and then that is juxtaposed by the line “King of heaven, Son of God,” which then leads to the worshipful response “Alleluia.” And you really have the mystery of the incarnation there in a nutshell. You’ve got it described so beautifully with a crying baby in a manger and yet this is the King of heaven, this is God in the flesh, this is the Son of God.

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