Tag Archives: Christmas carols

Music, Religion, Uncategorized

‘God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen,’ and Gary too

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I seem to be thinking of old carols this Advent season, so today I figured I’d look at a genuinely old carol (as opposed to that counterfeit antique, Wenceslas, that I covered a few days ago). I’m thinking here of God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen. According to Wikipedia, we know of an early version of this carol from the 17th Century, though the version we sing today comes from an 1833 collection produced in England by William Sandys.

Now right off, I find myself on the wrong foot about some of the words. I’ve always sung it as “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen” (more about the comma placement below). But according to the Wikipedia article, “In fact, ye would never have been correct, because ye is a subjective (nominative) pronoun only, never an objective (accusative) pronoun.” I, with my rough-and-ready workman’s grasp of English grammar, had no clue about this. (Oddly, the title on the YouTube clip above has it wrong, but the sing-along lyrics get it right.)

The most common misunderstanding about the song has to do with the meaning of the words, “God rest you merry, gentlemen.” Modern people assume the comma should go after you – “God rest you, merry gentlemen,” with “merry” describing “gentlemen.” But that’s because we’ve forgotten the idiomatic phrase, “rest you merry.” Shakespeare uses it in a couple of his plays, “As You Like It,” and “Romeo and Juliet.” It originally meant “God rest you [grant you to be] merry [peaceful and happy].”

Personally, I’ve been needing a little comfort and joy lately. One week ago tonight (Friday), my friend Gary Anderson passed away after a long illness. Gary was a founder and longtime central figure in my Viking reenactment group (that’s him on the right with me in the photo above). He was sort of a walking photo opportunity, an artist’s dream of a Viking, our most public face and voice.

He was a wounded and decorated Vietnam combat veteran. He was a professional Santa Claus in season, for many years. He was a dyslexic who taught himself to read. He came on strong, rather frightening me when I first met him, but he proved to be a stalwart and faithful friend. Another friend and I visited him a couple times during his last months, the final time about three weeks ago. Death is Grendel, a mighty foe, but it had to beat him to the ground before it took him. He never gave up. He went out as befits a Christian Viking.

Music, Religion

‘Away in a Manger’

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Tonight, “Away in a Manger.” It’s a Christmas hymn I tend to overlook – because it’s expressly for children and not very sophisticated. In my own personal history, it was the first Christmas carol I ever memorized. I remember (probably erroneously) singing it to my grandmother and an aunt or two (using the melody in the clip above) while riding in a car at night at Christmastime. But I moved on to songs that had more going on under the surface.

When I was a kid, I often heard “Away in a Manger” referred to as “Luther’s Cradle Hymn.” Everybody knew it was a translation from Luther. Turns out it wasn’t, though. Luther did write a Christmas hymn for his children, but it’s called “From Heaven Above To Earth I Come,” and can be found in any Lutheran hymnal. Nothing in his works resembles “AIAM” at all. It is, as someone has pointed out, not his kind of thing. If he’d written it, he’d have thrown in more theology. He was not a man to let a chance to catechize people go to waste. Sentimental he was not.

The origins of “AIAM” are in fact quite mysterious. According to Wikipedia, its earliest known appearance was on March 2, 1882 in the “Children’s Corner” of an anti-Masonic paper called The Christian Cynosure. Within a few months it had appeared in a couple other publications, always identified as “Luther’s Cradle Song.” This is rather perplexing. Somebody actually wrote the thing, but they gave credit to the Reformer. Why?

It’s been suggested (again, I get this from Wikipedia) that it may have originated in a forgotten children’s Christmas play, in which Luther sings the song for his children. Maybe somebody took the script literally, and reprinted it cutting the play’s author out. Nobody seems to have sued for copyright infringement, in any case.

The immortal author Lars Walker refers to “AIAM” in his novel Troll Valley, complaining that, because the song describes “the little Lord Jesus asleep in the hay,” many people draw the erroneous conclusion that hay is stuff for animals to sleep on. This is wrong, because a manger is a feed trough, and hay is for eating and belongs there. What animals sleep on is straw, another agricultural product altogether.

Music, Religion

‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’: not a secret code

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Above, a fine rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” done by Hayley Westenra and some guys I never heard of.

I was thinking about Christmas music today. I’ve posted a number of Christmas hymns here over the years, but not a lot of secular carols. I thought, “I should post a fun, secular Christmas song, and talk about it.” Then I asked, “What is my favorite secular Christmas song?” And I realized I have no idea.

I don’t think of the secular Christmas songbook the same way I think of the hymns. Aside from a couple that I hate (like “Little Drummer Boy,” which I’ve denounced here before), I like them all pretty equally, as familiar, mostly interchangeable elements of the season’s background music. The songs have pleasant associations. I’d date them, but I don’t want to marry any of them.

There’s a story that keeps going around (I haven’t seen it yet on Facebook this year, but I expect it’ll show up) that says the song was originally a super-secret, underground memory aid to help Catholics in teaching their children the catechism, back when Catholicism was illegal in England. This story is completely false, and won’t sustain even a few seconds of dispassionate interrogation, let alone a persecutor’s thumbscrews. (I’m not denying the persecution, though. I can sympathize, even as a Lutheran.)

Let me say this clearly: Two random numbered lists don’t assist each other in any way. Mnemonics mostly rely on matching first letters – as in repeating “Good Boys Do Fine Always” to help one remember the whole notes in the treble clef (or something. I remember the mnemonic, but I’ve forgotten what it’s supposed to remind me of). The gifts in the “Twelve Days” bear no resemblance to the theological points they’re supposed to recall. It’s like saying, “Here’s a list of Holy Roman Emperors to help you remember the state capitols of the US. See, here’s Number One, Charlemagne – he corresponds to Montgomery, Alabama.”

“The Twelve Days of Christmas” is an example of what’s called a “cumulative song” according to Wikipedia (and since this isn’t about politics, I figure I can trust them here). Cumulative songs are songs played as games, where people sit in a ring (ideally) and each person in turn repeats what the previous singers have sung, and then adds an item of their own. The next singer has to do the same, adding yet another item to the list. When someone forgets, they usually have to pay a forfeit, such as being kissed or taking a drink.

Such games used to be popular in the days before electronic entertainment, and I myself am old enough to remember playing such a game (though I forget its title; need a mnemonic here) on a long bus ride to Bible camp in North Dakota.

Such feats of memory no doubt will astonish future generations – and probably a generation or two that’s around now.

Have I mentioned that I used to be able to recite “The Cremation of Sam McGee”?