Ours begins, “O holy night, the stars are brightly shining/ it is the night of the dear Saviour’s birth.” This puts us in a mellow mood. She sings it in the original French, and the words are dramatically different from our familiar English ones. The highlight on the disc, for me, is “O Holy Night.” We think of this number as the soprano showpiece par excellence, but this version is something else again. von Otter is Swedish, and her disc is redolent with the atmosphere of a snowbound land where “the great darkness of the Northern winter” reigns for eighteen hours a day. One of my favorite discs is Home For Christmas, a crossover album by the distinguished classical singer Anne Sophie von Otter. Everybody loves the tunes, but the words can sometimes be genuine revelations. There is a great deal to be learned from the words of the genuine Christmas carols. King Herod needs to be in there somewhere, to remind us of the nature of the world that the son of God was born into. Luke stands best by itself, and surely we must agree. īut then, this admirable reviewer goes on to complain about “sappy,” sentimental versions of the biblical story, with all the added paraphernalia of baby angels and little drummer boys. It has pretty much everything: a journey, a baby, a mass murderer, music, animals, refugees, the kindness of strangers, and big, big special effects. In terms of plain narrative, the Nativity story is hard to beat. Last week in The New York Times Book Review section on children’s Christmas books, a reviewer had this to say: Here in the Berkshires where it is wintry outside, it is all the more wonderful to be together in the church on Christmas Eve.īut for what purpose do we come together? What brings us here? Is it mostly sentiment, nostalgia, and wishful thinking? I hope some of that midnight thrill remains for you.
#On the stroke of midnight christina rossetti plus
Those who attended were all adults and older children, plus a significant number of college students-many of whom were a bit inebriated, but never mind-there was a glamour and excitement about it all that remains with me to this day. It was a rite of passage faith in Santa Claus was taken up into faith in the Lord Jesus. It began at 11, so that every one was receiving communion at midnight.
I will never forget the thrill of going to that service as a young teenager. It was clearly understood that when we got old enough, we too would be allowed to go to the midnight service.
When I was a child at Christmas, I was keenly aware that there was this thing called “the midnight service.” One of my parents would go to it while the other one stayed at home with me and my sister. They will… upward, and they will look to the earth, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish and they will be thrust into thick darkness.īut there will be no gloom for her that was in anguish…The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. …They say to you, “Consult the mediums and the wizards…should not a people consult their gods, the dead on behalf of the living?” …Surely for this word which they speak there is no dawn. Sermon by Fleming Rutledge Christmas Eve 2007 It was preached in this version at Christ Church, Sheffield MA (now Christ Trinity Church) Christ Church, Sheffield Massachusetts LAST MONTH OF THE YEAR 2007 A Sermon for Christmas Eve As far as I can tell, this sermon has never been published.
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