Carol line "no crying He makes" ... an "embarrassment" and "bizarre nonsense"

The Bishop makes valid points—good luck changing anything though.

Having had 4 children, I would have liked to have one that did not cry. I never thought to connect such behavior with Victorian control. I guess children then were to be seen and not heard.

The “no crying he makes” is an absurdity, I agree. But there are not implication that the shepherds were some sort of outcasts. That makes for good Christmas preaching, but far from reality.

Consider:

The Hebrew nation was a nation of shepherds when it entered Egypt under Joseph.
Israel’s most godly King, the one whose line led to Jesus Christ, was a shepherd.
Perhaps Christendom’s favorite psalm is the Shepherd’s Psalm, Psalm 23.
God frequently refers to Himself as Israel’s shepherd throughout the OT
Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd in John 10
The shepherds brought sheep through Bethlehem year round for temple sacrifice

There is nothing second rate about being a shepherd. Sure, compared to the small percentage of Jews who were wealthy, it wasn’t much. But it was an occupation very much in the Jewish mainstream. Now if they had been swineherders, that would be a different story. Those would be true outcasts.

I agree with this-

“all sorts of fantasies have grown up around Christmas” that leave many people thinking of the celebration as “nothing more than some sort of fairy story.”

, but other than that, it just sounds like his dog drank his eggnog.

In one generation it’s Scrooge; in another Mr. Potter. I nominate the “Jingle Bells” bashing bishop as this year’s Christmas curmudgeon. May his heart grow two sizes this season.

Dave

“Deck the Halls” is really a tavern song (technically it’s “Deck the Hall” as in the “mead hall” as in the “tavern”). “Fill the mead-cup, drain the barrel”? “See the flowing bowl before us”? Who but the soused go out on cold winter nights “heedless of the wind and weather”? And when’s the last time a group of unintoxicated people got together and sang “fa la la la la” with a straight face and without a hint of irony? For final proof, listen to this. That’s from the King’s Singers “A Little Christmas Music” album. Make more sense?

Tongue-and-cheek aside, maybe he’s right, but there are Christmas hams and there is eggnog, and no one’s going to complain about either.

I think the standard for judging a song about Christ’s birth or Person is different from secular Christmas songs.

We generally don’t sing “Jingle Bell Rock” in church (at least, we don’t), but, like Mounty’s ham and eggnogg — it’s great. I think having a “Merry” Christmas, for the believer, includes more than the spiritual aspects. But, then again, a lot of Christians have trouble with the legitimacy of (wholesome) fun for the sake of fun without some spiritual justification. Not me. Let the good times roll! Only forget the ham—it’s quarterd, baked roast duck with caraway seeds (the Slovak way), dumplings, and sweetened sauer kraut. Oh, I can smell the fragrance through my computer. Perhaps I am being raptured?

But the songs that are theological need to be at least fairly decent. “We Three Kings,” for example, assumes there are three and that the magi were kings. But it is still a great song, despite those inaccuracies, because it expounds the meaning of the three gifts and catches the general drift of the narrative.

Away in a Manager is really a lullaby, and we can perhaps grant it some space in that regard. But still, it misrepresents the human nature of Jesus (or almost implies a lack thereof).

One song that does not get enough airplay in our churches (but should), is God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. Most hymnals leave it out.
That’s a shame.

Reading that article, it sounds like someone just has his knickers in a twist (to put a British flavor to it). I’m sure there are plenty of legitimate problems with various carols, but I don’t see any problem with any of the examples he mentions.

As if baby Jesus waking without crying this time somehow implies that he never cries at all.

And what’s wrong with the line “mild, obedient, good as He”? Of course Jesus was an obedient, good son.

And as for “O Come, All Ye Faithful”, it isn’t meant as a historical recitation of what did happen (calling the “faithless, great unwashed” indeed!), but a call to believers today to metaphorically “come to Bethlehem” and “adore Him” all over again.

Honestly, people have to find something to complain about. There are far more egregious violations of the account of Christ’s birth than these invalid nitpicks.

I have no problem with We Three Kings. Just as we don’t know that there were three kings, we also don’t know that there weren’t three.

i thought traditionally the three kings tried to smoke a rubber cigar, it was loaded and exploded … at least that’s how I always heard it …

Ann,
That was funny!

Yeah, I am all for the pardoning of the lyrics and enjoying the songs under POETIC LICENSING…

All the Christmas cheer notwithstanding, I think it’s interesting how we approach this. For instance, many traditional carols and songs of Christmas fall squarely into the “doctrinally incorrect or very much lacking but we’ll go with it anyway” camp, just like, say, spirituals; and we don’t give, say, “Tell It Again” or “In the Garden” a free pass like we do any one of a dozen spirituals or carols. The only thing I can think of is, these carols and spirituals have a cultural significance attached that negate other more glaring faults.

So the million dollar question is: at what point does the cultural significance of a particular song outweigh it’s doctrinal content or other factors like (dare I go here?) it’s musical style? Just sayin’.

Mounty,

Which carols are doctrinally incorrect?

For starters, “Joy to the World” is really only appropriate after the millennial kingdom has started, but for the purposes of my previous statement I’m just going with what the good Bishop and others in this thread have mentioned. Of course one’s soteriological bent comes into play with such hymns as “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” and I’m sure once I wake up I can think of a few more. :)

Maybe “doctrinally incorrect” was a bit of an overstatement. However, the point remains that we allow things to go through in Christmas songs that we rush to change in other non-Christmas songs, or we simply drop them. We change the last stanza of “Arise, My Soul, Arise” because it’s we, not God, who are reconciled…but we leave the very same idea in “Hark.” And I’d venture to say we sing “Hark” more often than “Arise.” So at what point did we all collectively decide that God being reconciled in “Hark” was okay but that the same idea by the same author in “Arise” was not?

(And for the record, I’m very much in favor of leaving songs as the author wrote them. Few things are more embarrassing than singing a song I’ve known for years, without using a hymnal, only to find some well-meaning [I’m sure] editor completely changed the entire last half of the first stanza of “Rock of Ages” because he didn’t understand the lyrics. But I don’t want to get off-topic…)