Traditional Christmas Songs are Usually About Jesus Being Quiet. Why?
Ever noticed how many Christmas songs focus on Jesus being quiet? Our most traditional hymns seem to be enamored with describing a silent baby – and little else. Here’s some examples:
Warning: this post might criticize some of your favorite songs. You may want to turn back, now, if you’re terribly nostalgic.
1 – Silent Night
Let’s look at the lyrics of this song.
So, this song is about Jesus being quiet and calm. And a strangely bright night that is also very quiet. (Why is it so bright at night?) And why does that verse do little more than emphasize that Jesus was not making any noise?
When the song is over, I feel like I’m the only person in church who realizes that we just sang about a how calm He was. For many people this is the most dramatic part of the service, but the song always leaves me confused and nearly asleep (due to the lullaby-ish melody).
2 – O’ Little Town of Bethlehem
This song usually follows, or precedes, Silent Night, so I get to spend a good amount of time on Christmas Eve considering that Jesus was apparently born on an oddly quiet evening. This time we’re singing about an entire city being peaceful and never entering REM sleep overnight.
Of course, that song does move away from the extolling the virtues of quietness and into some theological stuff, but we still have to spend a decent amount of time singing about a lull in the air.
3 – Away in a Manger
This song has six verses. The first two describe Jesus sleeping, quietly. Then this happens:
Everything was going just fine, until some thoughtless cow made noise near the manger. But, don’t worry – Jesus was still not making noise! Whew, that was a close one.
Christian theology teaches that Jesus’ birth was a miracle by which God became man and, in doing so, was able to offer redemption to the world. But these songs are more interested in quiet children. (Is it possible that these songs are just propaganda tunes written by parents of loud children?)
As you can see, it’s easy to spend half of a Christmas-themed church service singing about Jesus’ introverted behavior as an infant, but I can’t figure out why.
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One of the reasons I go to the lyrics in Andrew Peterson’s song, “Labor of Love”:
It was not a silent night
There was blood on the ground
You could hear a woman cry in the alley-way that night
On the streets of David’s town
It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love
I dislike each of these hymns (which is saying something because I generally like hymns), and I think it’s because of the lullaby-like music, which I never really connected to the lullaby-like lyrics. Give me “O Holy Night” any day (Christmastime or otherwise), which is deeply theological and evokes an entirely different kind of quiet.
Brian, I love the Peterson lyrics; thanks for sharing. I appreciate how “Labor of Love” resists romanticizing the Incarnation and eschews sentimentality. If the Incarnation wasn’t fully human, including pain and mess and noise, then it wasn’t enough.
You’re just showing us how little time you spend around infants, Adam. A silent child *IS* a miracle worth writing a song about!!! 😉
The virgin was round because she was pregnant, right?
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Ok, anyway, I tend to agree with all of you here. Andrew Peterson is great. “Hark the Herald Angels Sing” is a wonderful hymn with great theology.
Now there is something to the non-crying Baby Jesus theme. A baby who never cries is probably an unhealthy one, but a baby who doesn’t whine is a baby without sin. I’m sure Baby Jesus cried, and the night was not silent for so many reasons; but I’m sure this was one baby who didn’t cry without having a good reason.
I’ve seen tiny babies scream with rage at their parents (and I’ve been the parent); a baby who doesn’t do that is, indeed, a miracle baby.