My father was in charge of the family soundtrack in the house I grew up in. Every morning during the school year he woke up and turned on the small RCA record player in our living room, (the kind where you could stack LPs for continuous play, but only if the lid was raised) and as my brother, sister and I began to get ready for school we’d hear a steady diet of “Belefonte at Carnegie Hall”, Elvis (the Vegas version), Anne Murray, and Stompin’ Tom Connors. Then, every year, in early December, my father would change the morning soundtrack in our house. He’d dust off a plethora of Christmas records and for a month at least, we were at least culturally Christian (though I don’t remember every being in a church of any kind until I was at least 10 or 12.)
Strangely, my first introduction to Unitarian Universalism probably came via Tennessee Ernie Ford. Famed for his rendition of the song “Sixteen Tons” and his deep bass-baritone voice, Ford released an album in 1963 called The Story of Christmas. Originally a television special (I only just found this out) backed by the Roger Wagner Chorale, Ford recites the story of the birth of Jesus from the Gospel according to Luke and another story about the first Christmas tree as well as singing a wide range of Christmas carols, including “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.” When my Dad moved out of his house a few years ago, among other things he passed along to me, were his Christmas records, this one among them.
Little did I know growing up that “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” was written by a Unitarian minister, Edmund Hamilton Sears. The carol is a bit of an anomaly during this season. There is no mention of a baby, or a manger, and the mood is uncharacteristically melancholy for a season largely advertised to be about joy and hope. Ford’s angels, instead of proclaiming the birth of Jesus in the past, are here in the present reminding us of the Christian message: “Peace on Earth, goodwill to men, from heaven’s all-gracious King” (changed to “Peace on the earth, to all good will, from heaven the news we bring” in the UU hymnal Singing the Living Tradition.) Written at the request of Ford’s friend W. P. Lunt a fellow Unitarian minister from Quincy, Massachusetts, the song was first performed as part of the 1849 Sunday School Christmas celebration in Lunt’s church. The carol illustrates the despair Ford was feeling as he heard of revolution in Europe and the reflected on the recently ended war between his own country and Mexico.
170 years later, sadly, we still need Ford’s message which I think is ultimately one of hope. The last verse of the carol longs for the day when the message of peace on earth is sung back to the angels: “For lo!, the days are hastening on,/By prophet bards fortold,/When with the ever-circling years/Comes round the age of gold/When peace shall over all the earth/Its ancient splendors fling,/And the whole world give back the song/which now the angels sing. May we continue to work as individuals and as a society to make this so.
Yours in Service,
Tim