It Came Upon a Midnight Clear

This may be the most poetic and complex Christmas song out there.  It is beautiful.  The melodic line is just challenging enough to be fun for carolers and choirs without being impossible for a congregation.  It might be my new favorite.

It came upon a midnight clear

That glorious song of old

From angels bending near the Earth

To touch their harps of gold

"Peace on the earth, good will to men!" 

 From heaven's most gracious king.

 The world in solemn stillness lay

 To hear the angels sing.

In this verse is as much as I've talked about any three previous entry in this series, right?  So impressive.  And yet, this entire song is really imagining just one moment -- the appearance of the angels in the skies.  So it's kind of made for me -- a beautiful description of a major but not central moment examined in all of its many different significances.

A beautiful still night, but the first really exciting phrase is "that glorious song of old".  And the simple meaning -- of Jesus as the fulfillment of the promise -- is portrayed as a celebratory music.  But not just that -- it's "that song of old" which is a concept that just breaks my heart.  It's why I have never gotten through the Viva Marseilles scene of Casablanca without crying and why "I'm Going to Go Back There Someday" is such an important song to me.  I will always cry at the songs of a lost world being sung in the new.  That impossible longing.

And then "I'm Going to Go Back There Someday" completes it properly -- that there's a song we don't officially remember, have probably never actually heard -- that has that same feeling.  That stirs our souls, longing for heaven.  It's not a new inspiration the way so many other things out there are.  It's an old song we've never heard before.  It's an ancient but true song our souls recognize anyway.

The song of the angels.

And its message?  Peace to everyone not just you or the people you already consider us.  Have good will to everyone.  God Himself says this is the right course, not all the things you make up yourselves and even do in His name (you know, the one He told you not to take in vain and you mistook as a prohibition against cursing).

And there was one night where the whole world listened to the original performance.