"DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEAR?"
SAID THE LITTLE LAMB
The Christmas Story and Other Redeeming Myths
Pontius the Pilot and the Flight to Egypt PDF
The Christ Child, Illegitimate Children, and the Meaning of the Gospel PDF
In a recent New York Times column titled "Whose Christmas Is It?" singer Michael Feinstein related a story about Christmas concerts he had performed in California 10 years ago. At one concert, before he went on for the second night, he received an anonymous complaint that his music was "too Jewish." Feinstein was angry, but what could he do about the fact that many of our Christmas favorites "White Christmas," "Silver Bells," "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and "Winter Wonderland" were indeed written by Jews? Feinstein responded by adding more Jewish composers to his program.
At least Christians can be satisfied that their sacred music has been written by fellow believers. We Unitarians are sometimes sensitive to the fact that while enjoy singing that wonderful music, we have sometimes been criticized perhaps rightly so for changing some of the words in popular Christian hymns.
The Christmas favorite "Do You Hear What I Hear," when performed well, brings me to my feet just as King George II stood during Handel's Hallelujah Chorus. I was delighted to learn that the lyricist Noel Regney was a Unitarian convert from Catholicism.
After fighting for the French Resistance in World War II, Regney came to the U.S. in 1952 and married pianist/composer Gloria Shayne. In addition to their great Christmas piece, they also wrote "Rain, Rain, Go Away," "Sweet Little Darlin'" and many other top tunes. Regney and Shayne wrote their famous carol during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and they must have decided perhaps due to the threat of nuclear annihilation that the Mighty King in their song should have a different view of the world than King Herod.
Before writing this column I listened to many versions of the piece on YouTube Whitney Houston's, Cee Cee Winans', Carrie Underwood's, the Carpenters' but I have to admit, and many out there will roll their eyes, that Johnny Mathis' rendition is still the best. Rest assured, however, that "Hello, Young Lovers" is no longer my favorite song. I was dismayed to hear that Houston left out the Night Wind at the beginning of the song. It is the Night Wind that tells the Little Lamb to look skyward and see "a star, dancing in the night, with a tail as big as a kite." Did Regney think the Star of Bethlehem was a comet rather than a conjunction of planets, as some scientists believe?
If the Night Wind is a witness for the earth, then today she could ask the Little Lamb to look at what he sees in India. The Ganges River, worshipped as a goddess by the Hindus, has a coliform bacterial count 3,000 times higher than the UN standard for safe water. The Night Wind could also tell the Little Lamb to look at the Himalayan glaciers, melting at such a rate that tens of millions of people will soon be threatened by huge floods. The Night Wind is right now witnessing the total disappearance of the Chacaltaya glacier in Bolivia, once the highest in the world. The Night Wind and her daytime sisters are invigorated by the warmest years in recorded history. By their very nature they cannot help but cause more unpredictable and destructive storms.
The Little Lamb follows his encounter with the Night Wind by asking the Shepherd Boy: "Do you hear what I hear?" Today the Shepherd Boy could hear some of same sounds he heard 2,000 years ago the sounds of children, hundreds of millions more now, crying because they are sick and hungry. The Shepard Boy would be dismayed at the same huge gap between the rich and the poor. He would hear the pleas of 1.3 billion people who are trying to feed, clothe and house their children on less than $2 per day.
The Shepherd Boy would be alarmed that today there are just as many discordant voices and armed battles as there were 2,000 years ago. Thousands of young children are carrying arms into battle and a record number of girls and women are being raped.
Turning from the Little Lamb, the Shepherd Boy asks the Mighty King in his "palace warm": "Do you know what I know? A Child shivers in the cold, let us bring him silver and gold." What the children of the world need far more than jewels is clean water; as many as 4,400 die each day from diarrhea and other water borne illnesses. Today the Shepherd Boy would know, sadly, that last year 8.8 million children died from various illnesses before they reached the age of 5.
Even though the world's farmers produce enough food for everyone, over one billion people are malnourished. Every day 16,000 children die of hunger in the world. The Shepherd Boy would be shocked to learn that in 2006, 25 million Americans applied for emergency food assistance. Today more than 36 million Americans use the food stamp debit cards.
The Mighty King, not the Herod of Jesus' time, says: "Listen to what I say: Pray for peace, people everywhere! The child, sleeping in the night, will bring us goodness and light." Although Herod most likely did not command the slaughter of infants (see first column link above), we know from the historian Josephus that he was indeed a very evil man.
Critics of Unitarianism are correct: Once you give up the Trinity and affirm divine unity, then it is a slippery slope down the heresy slide. American founding thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had given up both the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ. (See my article on the religious views of the founding thinkers here.) For Unitarians the birth of a divine child is a metaphor for the promise and great possibility of all infants born into this world. We see the miraculous births of Confucius, Buddha and Jesus as symbols of the hope that every newborn child brings to a broken world.
Our Unitarian choir, with yours truly singing in the bass section, will perform "Do You Hear What I Hear?" on Christmas Eve. We don't expect to bring the congregation to its feet, but I'm sure they'll give us a good round of applause. May we all hope that there will soon be a king who speaks of peace and who does not have to make war at the same time.