And in America, we made it stick.

Sacred Music for a Holy Day

The existence of the secular and romantic and nostalgic and comic and childish sides of Christmas has not stifled or replaced the holiness of the celebration, however.  In Christian churches throughout the world, the Savior’s life is celebrated with a holiday marking its beginning.  Who cares if the actual date is wrong?  We’ve picked a day, all of Christendom, when we remember the hopeful beginning.

As The Passion of the Christ showed, it can be dismal indeed to think about the last hours of Christ’s life.  In a way, we remember the ultimate impact of his mission on earth more faithfully in a Christmas celebration: A birth presaging a new birth.  Of course we keep Easter, and remember the sacrifice; but it is not inappropriate to remember the rejoicing of angels (and of parents!) as the Savior came into the world as that most hopeful of figures: an infant.

As a child I wondered why we had only a handful of Easter hymns -- the most popular being “He Is Risen” (199) and “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” (200) -- while Christmas is celebrated in our sacrament meetings with fifteen hymns.

My father told me at the time I first asked that this was because every sacrament song was, in fact, an Easter hymn -- and that’s true.  But they aren’t uniquely Easter hymns; after all, sacrament songs also, by implication, could be said to commemorate the true meaning of Christmas, as well.

Easter is a solemn occasion (which is why, in our house, the fun of Easter baskets is confined to Saturday, and on the Sabbath there are no insubstantial bunnies, dust or otherwise, scampering across our floor.  (That’s right, I’m open-minded and tolerant about Christmas, and a real prig about Easter.  So sue me.)

We want the Christmas season to last as long in our church meetings as it does in our shopping malls -- not a bad idea!  And that requires that we have enough hymns to avoid repeating ourselves.

Which suggests that there’s room for more.

Now, for choirs there is no shortage of Christmas music.  The Messiah is beyond the reach of most ward choirs (though in the choir where I learned serious singing, Margaret Brown’s marvelous choir in the old Orem 31^st Ward, we did Handel proud).  There are also Christmas cantatas of varying quality produced by LDS composers.   Most usually have one or two good songs, and the rest are at best filler, but that’s almost inevitable.

Unfortunately, cantatas don't go through the rigorous procedure that musical comedies do, where in out-of-town tryouts you learn which songs are stinkers and jettison them, replacing them with different songs that serve a different purpose.  Instead, the filler stays with the cantata to the bitter end.

There are composers who, with sacred intent, have greatly added to the repertoire of music available for sacred performance, though not always for sacrament meeting.  The Alfred Burt carols and John Rutter’s bright and ethereal Christmas songs come to mind.

Those written by non-Mormons, however, inevitably reflect doctrinal ideas that don't sit well with an LDS congregation.  There are words in choir versions of “O Come All Ye Faithful” that were omitted from our hymnbook for good reason.  (“Lo, he abhorred not the Virgin’s womb” doesn’t come easily to Mormon lips.)

That’s why W.W. Phelps gets credit for altering Isaac Watts’s text to “Joy to the World” for the version we have in our hymnbook.  And the only Latin we stick with is “Gloria in excelsis Deo,” which strikes most Mormons as nonsense syllables like “Fa-la-la-la-la, la la la la.”

What’s interesting is the great variety of intent within the songs we have.  We associate them all with Christmas, but “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” actually has the Second Coming as its climax.  Yes, the glorious old song was sung by the angels on Christmas Eve, but that was just prelude to “when the new heaven and earth shall own the Prince of Peace their King.”

And “O Little Town of Bethlehem” is actually a very personal, reflective bit of verse, where the writer (Phillips Brooks) pointed out that the streets of Bethlehem don’t ring with rejoicing because Christ was born there; and that the real miracle now is how Christ reenters the world “where meek souls will receive him.”

Doctrinally, we put up with many elements that we view as metaphor or tradition.  In “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” nobody supposes that Christ has wings, though we sing “ris’n with healing in his wings.”

“I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” has a storylike movement: The speaker is someone who can’t rejoice on Christmas because war is raging and the words “peace on earth” seem to be a mockery.  It is only the promise of a positive outcome that makes the present state of the world bearable to him.  Personally, I’ve never had that particular feeling, so the song doesn’t really speak to me.  But when I remember that it arose out of the strained era of the American Civil War, I can understand the hymn and appreciate its inclusion in the hymnbook.

Fourteen Christmas songs, and a scattering of additional choir songs that are growing in familiarity.  Is there room for more?

Of course.  The question is, have we anything more to say?  No need, I think, for another hymn that treads on the territory that existing hymns cover well.  We have “O Little Town of Bethlehem”; does that mean we need a hymn about Nazareth, too, since that’s where he spend his boyhood?  Do we need a really good Wise Men hymn (since “We Three Kings” has never caught on as a sacrament meeting text)?

A New Hymn for Christmas

Naturally, I wouldn’t be writing a column about Christmas songs if I didn’t have my own attempt to show you. But I must confess that I wasn’t drawn to writing Christmas songs until I was actually writing this column.

That’s because for many years -- since college, actually -- my dear friend and longtime collaborator, Robert Stoddard, has had a tradition of writing a new Christmas song each year to share with family and friends.  A few years ago he collected them in an album called December Tales, with full orchestration and John Huntington, another college friend and a well-known singer and voice teacher in southern California, doing the vocals.

Robert’s album covers the whole range of Christmas possibilities -- the romantic song (between husband and wife), a sprightly song about ornaments, a song for children called “The Tiniest Star,” a song sung to a parent’s own infant, “I Cradle You Close,” and a song in which the manger is taken metaphorically as a symbol of where all Saints come together to become one.

These songs are musically wonderful and lyrically moving and memorable.  They are also so very good that I felt no need to write songs of my own.  My one early attempt (“This Is the Night”) seemed feeble even to me, compared to Robert’s work.  So when, a few years ago, I thought of a Christmas lyric, instead of writing the song myself I sent it on to Robert, offering it to him in case he wanted to use it.  The result was the title track of the album; and I was through with any need to write Christmas songs.

But none of Robert’s songs was actually a hymn designed for sacrament meeting.  So in preparing for this column, I searched for a theme to develop so I could show a Christmas hymn text -- good or bad -- in this column.

Here is the result:

Christmas Hymn
by Orson Scott Card

He could have come like lightning,
Justice bright with ire,
Wonderful and fright’ning --
All would see him and admire.
          Instead he chose a stable.
          Starlight was his fire.
          Cattle shared his table.
          Only shepherds heard the choir.

His gentle mother bore him,
Nursed him when he cried,
Ever watched out for him,
Was his comfort and his guide.
         That seemed to be his story:
         Neither wealth nor pride.
          Who beheld his glory
          As the Son was sanctified?

He opened up the prison,
Broke the gates of hell.
Jesus had arisen!
All creation had to tell!
         Now set aside your mourning:
         Sing your glad noel!
         This is Christmas morning!
         Rise and ring the Christmas bell!

It’s a simple enough concept -- I wanted a hymn that absolutely tied Christmas and Easter into a single song.  The final stanza does that.  We’re to sing noel and ring the Christmas bell precisely because Christ rose from the dead and broke the gates of hell.  That is ultimately the Christmas message -- that is the good news.

I showed an early version of this text to Mark Mitchell, who is among the composers who have been writing hymns to some of my verses -- he has generously allowed me to share some of his work with you in earlier columns.

He came back with a simple but effective tune -- and suggestions.

For instance, where the first stanza now has the word wonderful I originally had written dazzling -- because I wanted to have a word that was less vague than wonderful and that included the idea of light from the original simile of lightning.

The trouble was, as Mark pointed out, when sung to music that would work for the other two stanzas, the word dazzling had to be broken into three syllables.

Well, why not?  That’s how most of us pronounce it.  That is, we don't really say “daz-ling,” we turn the letter L into a syllable of its own: “daz-ul-ling.”  But it’s awkward to divide it under the notes -- “daz-zl-ing” is correct but unattractive -- and in fact a schwa is hard to sing convincingly.

So I changed “justice hot with ire” in the second line to “bright with ire,” so I still had a word reminding us of the light of lightning, and then put the more singable wonderful in pace of dazzling.

The third stanza caused more problems.  Mark didn’t like the repetition of Christmas in the last two lines of the song; to him it felt as if I had run out of words.  Why should both the morning and the bells be modified by the same adjective?  And I was unhappy with using homophones for the rhyme words: mourning and morning.  (Some people claim to pronounce them differently, but it’s as subtle as the real but barely perceptible differences in the pronunciations of Mary, merry, and marry.)

At first I resolved to stick with the third stanza as I had it.  But then, just the night before writing this column, a phrase came into my mind: Where I had “this is Christmas morning” I should instead say, “Born is Life Eternal, Rise and ring the Christmas bell!”  Born and bell would give me the repetition I wanted, and I loved the idea of using Life Eternal as a name for Christ.

It would also get rid of that morning/mourning rhyme.

The trouble was, the list of rhymes with eternal is very short and doesn’t lend itself to ebullient lyrics.  So I had to resort to the lyricists’ bag of tricks to make it work.

Today we join the angel,
Sing that glad noel:
Born is Life Eternal!
Rise and ring the Christmas bell!

As anyone can see, angel and eternal don’t rhyme -- not properly, not on the accented syllables.  But angel does contain the nasal of the N in eternal, and because they’re separated by a line, it is, as they say, good enough.  (But maybe I only think that because I listen to so much country music, where slant rhymes and false-consonant rhymes abound.)

I’m content with either ending -- neither is perfect, but both deliver the message I wanted.

In addition, Mark pointed out a real problem with the song that made it a challenge for a composer.  It’s the problem posed by any song -- for instance, “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day” -- in which the stanzas move us through a series of different emotions.  Just as in “Bells,” there are stanzas where the same musical moment is sometimes depressed and sometimes rejoicing, my original had posed some challenges.

In the draft I first showed him, the second stanza ended quite darkly:

Who beheld his glory
On the dreadful day he died?

There was simply no rational way for a composer to write a melody and harmony that would express that sentiment and then work well for the words “This is Christmas morning, rise and ring the Christmas bell” in the next stanza!  As with “I Heard the Bells,” he had no choice but to write for the happy climax and let the darker words fend for themselves.

But that’s when it's the lyricist’s job to adapt.  In writing my original, I was still thinking like a poet, flowing with the idea I wanted to convey and without regard, beyond syllable count, for the music.  Now that I had Mark’s melody, I could recast the line about Jesus’ death and replace it with the much brighter “Who beheld his glory as the Son was sanctified?”

I didn’t lose anything by changing the words to meet the needs of the music -- I gained.  I still referred to Jesus’ sacrifice, but did it in a positive way; and I was able to name him as “the Son” and gain the alliteration of Son/sanctified.  And Mark didn’t have to deal with the word “died” in the same position that would hold the word “bell” in the next stanza.

Going All the Way to Easter

It also occurred to me that in bringing Christmas and Easter together in one Christmas hymn, couldn’t I also bring them together in an Easter hymn?

Of course nobody would feel good about ending an Easter hymn with an injunction to ring a Christmas bell! So I need a new final stanza:

He opened up the prison,
Broke the gates of hell.
Jesus has arisen!
With the Father all can dwell!
          So set aside your grieving:
          Christ will raise this shell,
          All our sins reprieving,
          Pardoned by Emmanuel.

The first three lines are almost the same (though had becomes has); but “All creation had to tell” was jettisoned in order to stress, not the “breaking news” aspect of the story, but the practical result, that we might live with our Father in Heaven.  (I also had some notion of needing the word tell as a rhyme word in the new version of the second half of the stanza; false alarm, but I liked “all can dwell” well enough that I left that change in place.

The real challenge was assembling an Easter message out of the last two lines, where I had rhymed “noel” and “bell.”  Because each stanza used a single rhyme for all the even-numbered lines -- requiring four rhyme words instead of the usual two -- I was already stretching the limits of the English language.

And now, between the two versions of the last stanza, I would end up with seven words on the same rhyme! (Hell tell, noel, and bell in the Christmas version; hell again, then dwell, and -- after much striving -- shell and Emmanuel in the Easter version.

The word that strains here is shell.  It’s a good poetic metaphor for the human body temporarily discarded in death, but raised in the resurrection; but I had no room to explain it.  I therefore required that the audience grasp the metaphor.  But I think everyone will, and on first hearing, too.  And instead of a difficulty, it will be one of the more pleasant ideas in the song.

So imagine this hymn coming right between “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today” and “Joy to the World” in the hymnbook.  And while it shows the Christmas verses, all in a row, the Easter stanza is offered with a notation that it is to be sung in place of the third stanza when the hymn is sung outside of the Christmas season.

Of course, during the same week I also came up with what I think is a dynamite country song for the Christmas season.  But since there’s no way that a song that uses the image of toy trains around the Christmas tree will ever end up being sung in sacrament meeting, I’ll spare you that lyric.

However, with Mark Mitchell’s generous agreement, we are offering you his music as well as my words to “He Could Have Come Like Lightning.”

click to enlarge

Post your comments -- but not your own hymn texts, unless you wish to surrender copyright! -- here on Meridian.  And don't send hymn texts to me!  I'’m not a music publisher.

However, if you’re a composer and wish to set one of my hymns to music, don’t ask for my permission first. I hereby grant you permission to use my hymn text free of charge in your own musical setting, as long as you don’t publish or sell the result.

In other words, you can perform your hymn as much as you want.  But the moment you want to publish it or record it or charge for it, then we need to talk -- I’ll need to hear your hymn and decide if I approve of it before you can publish, record, or charge for the combined work.  I can be reached at http://www.nauvoo.com or http://www.hatrack.com.

And if I deny permission, then you can simply write your own words to fit the music you wrote.  You won’t lose a thing.

This essay and the original hymn text are copyright 2004 by Orson Scott Card.  Except as specified above, all rights reserved.