Author M. R. James (1862–1936) is known for his ghost stories. The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, where he was director for fifteen years, called him “the originator of the ‘antiquarian ghost story.'” In doing so, he updated such stories for a new generation. He told these stories to friends and students at King’s and Eton Colleges on Christmas Eve, and since we’ve told our own stories in like manner, allow me to share this wonderful video of Christopher Lee performing “A Warning to the Curious” in a setting akin to James’ Christmas Eve parties.
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Advent Ghost Stories: Her Husband’s Tree
The tree had always been her husband’s thing. They had fewer ornaments now — glass orbs shattered, some shards still on the floor. But his lights still twinkled.
“We haven’t seen Randall in so long. How’s he doing?”
He died December 2020, before putting up the tree, and she couldn’t manage it herself. But as rigor mortis set in, she realized she could have both tree and man. She made her traditional cookies, set out pine-scented candles, and there was Randall with ornaments, lights, and Santa hat topping — her forever tree.
She gave her standard reply. “He doesn’t get out much.”
This 100-word short short story is a contribution to Loren Eaton’s Advent Ghost Storytelling Fest. Read a description and other entries on I Saw Lightning Fall.
Photo by Matthieu Comoy on Unsplash
Advent Singing: What Sweeter Music
Today’s hymn is another old one that’s has been revived by the great John Rutter into the piece performed in the video above. “What Sweeter Music” or Herrick’s Carol was originally written by Englishman Robert Herrick (1591-1674), who is better known for the poetic line “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”
“When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.’” (Luke 2:15 ESV)
1. What sweeter music can we bring
Than a bright carol, for to sing
The birth of this, our heavenly King?
Awake the voice! Awake the string!
Refrain:
We see him come and know him ours,
Who with his sunshine and his showers
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.
2. Dark and dull night, fly hence away,
And give the honor to this day,
Which sees December turned to May;
If we may ask the reason, say: [Refrain]
3. The darling of the world is come,
And fit it is we find a room
To welcome him. The nobler part
Of all the house, here is the heart: [Refrain]
4. Thus we will give him and bequeath
This holly and this ivy wreath
To do him honor, who’s our King
And Lord of all this revelling: [Refrain]
Advent Singing: Mighty God, While Angels Bless Thee
This 1774 hymn was noted in the earliest record as a Christmas hymn by Robert Robinson (1735-1790) of Norfolk, England, and it shows how the first coming of the Lord is often blurred with his second coming. The original music for the hymn was lost, but what’s that to any hymn?
“I saw in the night visions,
and behold, with the clouds of heaven
there came one like a son of man,
and he came to the Ancient of Days
and was presented before him.
“And to him was given dominion
and glory and a kingdom,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him;
his dominion is an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away,
and his kingdom one
that shall not be destroyed.” (Daniel 7:13-14 ESV)
1 Mighty God, while angels bless thee,
May an infant lisp thy name?
Lord of men as well as angels,
Thou art every creature’s theme.
2 Lord of every land and nation,
Ancient of eternal days;
Sounded through the wide creation
Be thy just and lawful praise.
3 For the grandeur of thy nature,
Grand beyond a seraph’s thought,
For created works of power,
Works with skill and kindness wrought.
4 For thy providence that governs
Thro’ thine empire’s wide domain;
Wings an angel, guides a sparrow,
Blessed be thy gentle reign.
5 But thy rich, thy free redemption,
Dark thro’ brightness all along;
Thought is poor, and poor expression,
Who dare sing that awful song?
6 Brightness of the father’s glory,
Shall thy praise unutter’d lie?
Fly my tongue such guilty silence!
Sing the Lord who came to die.
7 Did Arch-angels sing thy coming?
Did the shepherds learn their lays?
Shame would cover me ungrateful,
Should my tongue refuse to praise.
8 From the highest throne in glory,
To the cross of deepest woe;
All to ransom guilty captives,
Flow my praise, for ever flow.
9 Go return immortal Saviour,
Leave thy footstool, take thy throne;
Thence return, and reign for ever,
Be the kingdom all thine own.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Hallelujah, Amen.
What Christian Art Is All About
A Christian professor of fiction published a piece “To the Christian Writer” in which he recommends good art as a thing separate from Christian faith.
He begins by saying, “there’s no such thing as Christian art.” If someone wants to be a Christian, he should pursue it wholeheartedly, but “bad art comes out when you compromise art-making with some other intent.” Some other intent like Christian morals.
“If your fiction feels like it’s veering toward a moral conclusion, stop.”
I want to understand this professor’s argument and view it charitably, and I agree moralistic fiction is often shallow and ugly. I’m sure if I ever gain the courage to pick up Sheldon’s In His Steps, the novel that gave us the question “What Would Jesus Do?” I’ll regret it. I couldn’t make it past chapter one of The Shack. But separating Christian devotion from art sounds post-modern to me in all the wrong ways. What is art if it cannot be pursued as an expression of Christian truth?
I’m not sure he’s actually saying that, because he also says, “As a Christian person, would you not say it’s a joy to follow God? So follow him through your work. Quit telling him where to stand and how to speak.” That’s good. It calls back to moralistic work which may sound Christian while being far from it. That’s not good art.
“Preconceived moralizing jacketed in fiction aims for the head and the heart. If you want to be a good writer, aim elsewhere.” What does that mean? Aim for the spleen? What is good art if it doesn’t move the heart or elevate the affections (thinking of Jonathan Edwards’s language)? What makes the work of Margaret Atwood, Jack Kerouac, Barbara Kingsolver, Haruki Murakami, Annie Proulx, or Salman Rushdie objectively good that he recommends them over Lewis, Chesterton, and O’Connor?
Could it be we’re actually wrestling over cultural respectability — that our work would find approval in the New York Times Review of Books or Harper’s Magazine?
I think art is its own virtue, like planting and tending a tree, and artistic choices are also moral choices. Some choices are going to be more accessible to the public than others. Some will require greater levels of skill to succeed. In all of these choices, the best ones (though maybe not the most popular) will be true, real, and good. Isn’t that what Christian art is all about?
Photo by Peter Ivey-Hansen on Unsplash
Advent Singing: Break Forth, O Beauteous Heav’nly Light
Advent starts today, and I think my hymn selections this month will lean into Christmas Day songs more than proper Advent songs. I may need to study the subject. The Trinity Hymnal has six hymns under Advent versus thirty-four under Christ’s birth. So, today’s hymn is a gorgeous carol the angel’s announcement and the awesome reality of what happens on Christmas, which is Christ’s first advent.
“Break Forth, O Beauteous Heav’nly Light” was written by Johann von Rist (1607-1667), a Lutheran pastor and prolific hymnist in the Hamburg area, in 1641. This translation comes from Englishman John Troutbeck (1832-1899).
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth (1 John 1:5–6 ESV).
1 Break forth, O beauteous heav’nly light,
and usher in the morning.
O shepherds, shrink not with affright,
but hear the angel’s warning:
this child, now weak in infancy,
our confidence and joy shall be,
the pow’r of Satan breaking,
our peace eternal making.
2 Break forth, O beauteous heav’nly light,
to herald our salvation.
He stoops to earth, the God of might,
our hope and expectation.
He comes in human flesh to dwell,
our God with us, Immanuel,
the night of darkness ending,
our fallen race befriending.
“Let me not waste the days You’ve given me.”
Bethel McGrew offers a poem for Thanksgiving that begins this way:
Let me not waste the days You’ve given me.
The mornings I might sleep away, the nights
When all my fears are all that I can see,
Trapped in the glow of flickering blue lights.
She notes our Internet-driven fears and her personal ones, asking the Lord to revive her with His goodness.
Let me believe that this, my grateful prayer
Is not in vain. Lord, let me not despair.
Sunday Singing: We Gather Together to Ask the Lord’s Blessing
Today’s Thanksgiving hymn is “We Gather Together,” a 1625 anonymous song, translated from the Dutch anthem “Wilt heden nu treden” by Theodore Baker. The melody is a popular sixteenth-century Dutch folk tune.
“… for the LORD your God is he who goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to give you the victory” (Deut 20:4 ESV).
- We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing;
He chastens and hastens his will to make known;
The wicked oppressing now cease from distressing.
Sing praises to his name; he forgets not his own. - Beside us to guide us, our God with us joining,
Ordaining, maintaining his kingdom divine;
So from the beginning the fight we were winning;
Thou, Lord, wast at our side; all glory be thine! - We all do extol thee, thou leader triumphant,
And pray that thou still our defender wilt be.
Let thy congregation escape tribulation;
Thy name be ever praised! O Lord, make us free!
Cozy, Irish Lit: Small Things Like These
Sheila had written the shortest letter, asking plainly for Scrabble, providing no alternative. They decided on a spinning globe of the world for Grace, who wasn’t sure what she wanted but had written out a long list. Loretta was not in two minds: if Santa would please bring Enid Blyton’s Five Go Down to the Sea or Five Run Away Together or both, she was going to leave a big slice of cake out for him and hide another behind the television.
Claire Keegan’s 2021 novella, Small Things Like These, is a story about Bill Furlong, a hard-working father of five girls. He’s the man who keeps his 1980s Irish town, New Ross, warm, selling timber, coal, anthracite, and slack. It’s honest work that puts a roof over your head, though the windows may be drafty. He regularly remembers his childhood as the son of a single woman who worked for a kindly widow. Surely, he thinks, someone in town knows who his father is, if by nothing else than a strong resemblance. But no one has even suggested a possibility.
With the Christmas holidays coming and typical last-minute fuel orders to fulfill, Furlong makes a delivery that raises significant questions about his role as a man and member of the community.
I don’t know why I love Irish things. I think half of my family hails from Ulster, which probably means they were Scottish, but something provoked me as a teenager to define myself as being half-Irish (in the loose way many Americans talk about their heritage). All that to say, Keegan’s novella had cozy moments in both the Christmas atmosphere and the Irish dialogue. I found those pages nostalgic somehow. I bought the book wondering if the whole story would be that way.
No, this is a sparing, literary work that captures a few days of Bill Furlong’s life. He’s a man of few words, so a brief story like this fits him, leaving us with a good impression of him and perhaps the same questions he has. I don’t want to spoil the book by articulating those questions, but I will say they are relatively timeless and fit with the Christmas story, just as the title echoes the primary theme: “inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me” (Mt 25:40 NKJV).
Photo by Dahlia E. Akhaine on Unsplash
Sunday Singing: My Times Are in Your Hand
Today’s hymn of humble reliance on the Lord comes from an Englishman who was devoted to Sunday School. William Freeman Lloyd (1791-1853) was born in Uley, Gloucestershire and worked in Oxford and London. The tune is an adaptation of an aria from Giovanni Paisiello’s opera La Molinara (The Miller Girl).
“But I trust in you, O LORD;
I say, ‘You are my God.’
My times are in your hand;
rescue me from the hand of my enemies and from my persecutors!” (Psalm 31:14–15 ESV)
1 My times are in Your hand;
my God, I wish them there!
My life, my friends, my soul, I leave
entirely to Your care.
2 My times are in Your hand
whatever they may be,
pleasing or painful, dark or bright,
as You know best for me.
3 My times are in Your hand;
why should I doubt or fear?
My Father’s hand will never cause
His child a needless tear.
4 My times are in Your hand:
Jesus, the Crucified;
those hands my cruel sins had pierced
are now my guard and guide.
5 My times are in Your hand;
such faith You give to me
that after death, at Your right hand
I shall for ever be.