“Born to raise the sons of earth / Born to give them second birth.”
When it comes to Christmas and Advent music, I’ve long stuck to a few hard patterns. First, and maybe most importantly, I hold off on any sort of consumption until Thanksgiving weekend. No Christmas creep! And second, I’ll begin by going hard on all the popular secular music, and then in the final week or so before Christmas, make a full transition to the classic religious Christmas hymns.
The pivot from Mariah Carey to Lessons and Carols happens at different points in December each year, but when it begins, I’ve always first gravitated toward “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”
It makes sense as a transition. A religious classic, sure, but also a song that’s deeply embedded in two of the best Christmas movies ever made. I always get emotional seeing Charlie Brown and his friends belt it out around his transformed little Christmas tree, and I get even more emotional seeing George Bailey’s friends and family sing it around the piano when they rescue him at the climax of “It’s A Wonderful Life.”
But the song took on a much deeper, much more profound meaning on Christmas Day seven years ago, when I got a call from my uncle: My grandmother was dying, and rapidly.
We had gone to church the night before, but in that moment, I did the only thing that made sense, knowing such an important person in my life was about to die: I went to Mass. I sat there toward the back in a haze, thinking about her life, thinking about various memories from over the years. I don’t really remember anything about that Mass at all except this: Toward the end of the service, I suddenly snapped to my senses as everyone began to sing “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.”
And at that third verse — the one where the organ typically cranks it up a gear — I started to listen closely to the lyrics.
Mild he lays his glory by, born that we no more may die.
Born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.
And suddenly, I was at peace.
This was the entire point of Christmas, and of our faith: that death is not the end. That the most bleak aspect of the human experience is, in fact, wrapped in hope.
I joined in with the rest of the church for the final chorus, doing my best to channel the Peanuts gang and the people of Bedford Falls, and doing my best to appreciate my grandmother’s life — both the one that ended that day, and the one that began.
