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 O morning stars, together
Proclaim the holy birth,
And praises sing to God the King,
And peace to all on earth!
For Christ is born of Mary
And, gathered all above
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wond'ring love.
3 How silently, how silently
The wondrous gift is giv'n!
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of his heav'n.
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 in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
The great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Immanuel!
(P. Brookes. Source)
Performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRuXdOb6TrA
We’re getting close to Christmas now, and the carols that most people will know or at least be able to hum the tune of. The words to ‘O little town of Bethlehem’ were written by Philips Brookes, an American priest, in 1868, a few years after he had visited Bethlehem. The music is more complicated- there are quite a few tunes which these words are sung to but in the UK the most familiar is “Forest Green” which was a traditional tune for a folk ballad called the “The Ploughboy’s Dream” collected by Ralph Vaughan Williams (from a Mr Garman of Forest Green in Surrey) and published in the early years of the 20th century.
The carol starts by describing Bethlehem, still and silent and dark, perhaps representing the whole world in their apparent lack of hospitality to visitors. It doesn’t feel a million miles away from the streets around where I live after dark, with people (as I write) stuck at home in lockdown. There’s something unsanitised about this Bethlehem. In a world before streetlights, darkness could be dangerous- especially if you were a woman.
Into these ‘dark streets’ comes the ‘everlasting light’ with the birth of Jesus.
The stars, previously silent, are now called to witness that God has arrived on earth: “O morning stars, together proclaim the holy birth”. This perhaps mirrors the calling of the earth to witness that we looked at back in ‘Joy to the World’. Humans (or mortals), meanwhile, still sleep silently, unaware of the change that has happened literally overnight, while angels look on in amazement and adoration. I’ve no idea why, but verse 2 sometimes appears with the second half first (beginning “For Christ is born of Mary”) rather than beginning “O morning stars”. I’m not even sure which is the original, but the 1928 Oxford Book of Carols has it as above, so I’m going with that.
I find it hard to imagine any birth being silent! But I don’t think it’s literal silence that’s being described, rather another reference to how unaware the human world was of what had happened at Bethlehem and its’ significance for the world. Even from a non-believing point of view, history was changed by this event, for better and for worse. Few could have had any idea of that at the time. But as well as world changing, there is the opportunity for it to be life-changing on a personal level:
“Where meek souls will receive him, still
The dear Christ enters in.”
[1]
The final verse picks up where verse 3 left off, calling for us to not be like silent Bethlehem or the sleeping mortals of verse 2, but to recognise Jesus as Emmanuel- that Jesus is God, that he came to earth and lived here, and died and was resurrected to repair our relationship with God.
But even if you don’t think you can believe that, maybe consider this a call to doing what you can to make the world a place where we’re not silent and unaware of the needs of others, but are listening and acting to make the world a better, more light-filled place.
“O come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel!”
[1] The Oxford Book of Carols includes an extra verse between the usual verses 3 and 4, which I don’t remember seeing before, and I certainly wouldn’t plan on using it. It feels very stereotypically Victorian.
Where children pure and happy
Pray to the blessed Child,
When misery cries out to thee,
Son of the mother mild;
Where charity stands watching
And faith holds wide the door,
The dark night wakes, the glory breaks,
And Christmas comes once more.
There seems to have been something of a Victorian tradition of using Christmas hymns to tell children how to behave- see the middle verses of ‘Once in Royal David’s City’ for similar examples.
