1 On Christmas night all Christians sing
to hear the news the angels bring;
on Christmas night all Christians sing
to hear the news the angels bring:
news of great joy, news of great mirth,
news of our merciful King’s birth.
2 Then why should we on earth be sad,
since our Redeemer made us glad?
Then why should we on earth be sad,
since our Redeemer made us glad,
when from our sin He set us free,
all for to gain our liberty?
3 When sin departs before His grace,
then life and health come in its place;
when sin departs before His grace,
then life and health come in its place;
angels and men with joy may sing,
all for to see the newborn King.
4 All out of darkness we have light,
which made the angels sing this night;
all out of darkness we have light,
which made the angels sing this night:
“Glory to God and peace to men,
now and forevermore. Amen.”
(Traditional/ Sharp/Vaughan Williams. Source)
First published in the 17th century but rediscovered by Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams in the early 20th Century. We seem to owe a lot of the ‘folk’ carols we know today to Sharp and Vaughan Williams’s efforts to collect versions from people in various parts of the country and to preserve and popularise regional variations.
Sharp’s “English Folk-Carols’ includes not only the Sussex carol, but This is the truth sent from above (see 7th Dec) and The Holly and the Ivy (see 6th Dec) as well as one of several Wassail songs (see 11th Dec). (see https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/English_Folk-Carols) The ‘Oxford Book of Carols’ edited by Vaughan Williams and others has a similar role, and includes many of the same carols (often in different versions). I have a copy from a 1946 reprint, bought second hand as a prop for a show a number of years ago. It’s great fun to read, if only because the editors can be quite snarky towards things they don’t like, such as Victorian hymnwriters and amateur musicians. In the preface, the editors describe carols as: “always modern, expressing the manner in which the ordinary man at his best understood the ideas of his age, and bringing traditional conservative religion up to date.”
The music feels light and almost a dance, unsurprising if we believe the Oxford Book of Carols’ assertion that carols in general evolved from dance music. The carol’s meaning too is light and fairly straightforward: Jesus’ arrival on earth is a cause for rejoicing because it will set humanity free from being held back by sin, and that therefore “Glory to God and peace to men Now and forever more Amen”.
I don’t know about you, but much of the time it doesn’t feel as if sin has departed, and there’s little sign of peace. Jesus’s life, death and resurrection doesn’t seem to have fundamentally changed the nature of the world in the way those at the time envisaged. The writers and singers of this carol and others throughout history must have known that, so how did they reconcile the hopeful imagery of verses 2 and 3 with the reality of life in an era before modern medicine and when starvation and death in battle were ever present threats? How do we reconcile it today in an age of pandemic, Black Lives Matter and Brexit?
There aren’t any easy answers. If we’re looking for the complete changing of the world to eliminate injustice, disease, war and poverty, we have to look further ahead. Right now we’re in what many Christians describe as ‘the now and the not yet’- in between Jesus’ coming at Bethlehem, and the second coming when there will be ‘a new heaven and a new earth.’ Till then, it’s up to those who have put their faith in Jesus and who have been changed by that relationship to try to make the world a better place here and now.
It may not be perfect, but it’s better than doing nothing.
