Happy National Go Caroling Day!
I adore Christmas music. All kinds. From fun kids’ songs like I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas to nostalgic tunes like I’ll Be Home for Christmas to haunting melodies like I Wonder as I Wander.
My favorites, however, are the carols that bring the nativity to life and celebrate the birth of our Savior.
O Little Town of Bethlehem is a traditional carol with a fascinating history. The lyrics were penned by an Episcopal priest named Phillips Brooks in 1868, but the story that inspired it began three years earlier.
Brooks, a young minister and staunch abolitionist, was asked to give a eulogy address at President Abraham Lincoln’s funeral. Yet following that service, the weariness of war caught up to Brooks. Craving rest and renewal, he took a sabbatical from preaching and visited the Holy Lands, seeking a measure of peace. Gazing out over the unassuming Bethlehem, the first lines of a poem sprouted in his mind. O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie. Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, a silent star goes by.
A couple years later he came back to that poem and completed it, intending to use it as part of the Christmas service at his church in 1868. He gave the poem to his organist Lewis Redner and asked him to set it to music. Render recalled the rush to find a melody this way:
“As Christmas of 1868 approached, Mr. Brooks told me that he had written a simple little carol for the Christmas Sunday-school service, and he asked me to write the tune to it. The simple music was written in great haste and under great pressure. We were to practice it on the following Sunday. Mr. Brooks came to me on Friday, and said, “Redner, have you ground out that music yet to ‘O Little Town of Bethlehem’?” I replied, “No”, but that he should have it by Sunday. On the Saturday night previous my brain was all confused about the tune. I thought more about my Sunday-school lesson than I did about the music. But I was roused from sleep late in the night hearing an angel-strain whispering in my ear, and seizing a piece of music paper I jotted down the treble of the tune as we now have it, and on Sunday morning before going to church I filled in the harmony. Neither Mr. Brooks nor I ever thought the carol or the music to it would live beyond that Christmas of 1868.”
But it lived well beyond that single Christmas service. In fact, one of the verses seemed strangely prophetic. Take note of verse three.
Late in life, Phillips Brooks met a young girl named Helen Keller. He was the first person to help her understand the existence and love of God. Brooks did not have any offspring of his own, but he loved children and when he met Helen during a visit she made to Boston at age 11, the two bonded. He longed to help her understand God, but how does one explain a spiritual concept to a child who needs to touch in order to understand? His persistence paid off, and the deaf and blind girl came to comprehend that the presence she’d always sensed but never understood had a name – God. How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is giv’n! So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heav’n. The two exchanged letters and became so close that when Helen’s younger brother was born, she encouraged her parents to name him Phillips in honor of her dear friend, Mr. Brooks.
I hoped you enjoyed learning a bit of the history behind this classic song. I’ll leave you with a recording by the talented Sarah McLachlan. Merry Christmas!