CHRISTMAS AND MUSIC!
Dear Foothills Family and Friends,
I'm excited that this coming Sabbath's service will feature the Foothills Christmas Choir! We will enjoy pieces of the Christmas Story presented in music.
Christmas music is a long-standing part of the Christian experience. Christmas hymns can be traced to 4th-century Rome and were in Latin. In the 9th and 10th centuries, musicians in Northern European monasteries developed the Christmas hymn into a sequence of rhymed stanzas. In the 12th century, a Parisian monk named Adam of St. Victor began to merge Christian lyrics into music that was well-known and popular. He is thought to be the earliest author of what we know today as Christmas Carols.
Some of our beloved Christian friends are critical of the choice of early Christians' who took the pagan winter solstice and turned it into a celebration of the "true light" that came into our dark world in the person of Jesus Christ. One way the church encouraged this celebration of Christ was by giving Christians Christmas songs to sing.
It was St. Francis of Assisi who encouraged the translation of Christmas Hymns (Carols) from Latin into native languages. This very quickly increased the popularity of singing Christmas Carols and celebrating Christmas. In 1223, Assisi's nativity plays in Italy had people sing songs or "canticles" that told the Christian nativity story. Christmas Carols in English first appear in a 1426 writing of John Awdley, a Shropshire chaplain, who lists twenty-five "Caroles of Cristemas." These carols were sung by the students on campus and throughout the villages and towns of England. In 1647, when Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans came to power in England, the celebration of Christmas and the singing of Carols was banished as it was judged as a pagan festival. However, Carols survived as people still sang them in secret (who can resist the message and experience of Christmas?!).
In Victorian times, Christmas became a holiday, and it was traditional for families to sing Carols after the Christmas meal. During this time two Cornishmen, William Sandys and Davis Gilbert gathered seasonal music from villages all around England and published collections of lyrics and tunes for over 100 Carols. Many of these are still familiar to us today such as "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," and "We Three Kings of Orient Are." Some Christmas Songs like "Good King Wenceslas" and "The Holly and the Ivy" can be traced directly back to the Middle Ages. England's oldest surviving Carol is: "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night" which has a sixteenth- century tune and seventeenth-century words. "O Come All Ye Faithful" was written toward the end of the eighteenth-century.
The Christmas season--especially in the West, is a mix of pre-Christian, Christian, and secular traditions. What's interesting is the etymology of the word Christmas. It is literally shortened from Christian Mass--a eucharistic or communion service where Christians remember the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christmas is celebrated to remember the birth of Jesus Christ--the Incarnation. Christians believe the baby who was born that night is the Son of God--God becoming one with us--a human being! Christ bringing to us the truth of God's Love for us! Christ is offering to us salvation, forgiveness, peace, joy, love, and eternal life with Him!
As fall is giving way to winter, lights twinkle from house to house, and our church is decorated so beautifully, we know Christmas is coming! Dressed-up Christmas trees are everywhere we look. Presents crowd for space under the tree and families are baking, and preparing for special times when they will be together.
In the Christian faith it is a time for spiritual reflection and celebration of faith. And one of the most valuable ways we remember and celebrate is through MUSIC! Come and worship this week as we musically welcome and celebrate The New Born King!
Joyously anticipating Christ's coming!!!
With love,
Pastor Duff
