Christmas Carols

     For a lot of us, Christmas time is a time of year when we feel an inexplicable joy. Fond memories may return to us. There is a sense of humanity that seems to pervade the atmosphere and even a sweet peace that warms the cockles of our hearts. 

     One Christmas, when I was a child, I sat spell-bound, listening to a little red record playing a song on a little record player in my brother's bedroom. The song was a carol called, "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear". I strained to hear the words, to try to comprehend them and wondered what "harps of gold" might look like. 

     Today, it amazes me that such a deeply spiritual message has endured through the centuries. It prophecies about an "Age of Gold" declared by the angels of God.

 

It Came Upon the Midnight Clear

It came upon the midnight clear

That glorious song of old

From angels bending near the earth

To touch their harps of gold.

Peace on the earth good will to men,

From Heaven’s all gracious King!

The world in solemn stillness lay

To hear the angels sing.

Still through the cloven skies they come

With peaceful wings unfurled

And still their heavenly music floats

O’er all the weary world;

Above its sad and lowly plains

They bend on hovering wing.

And ever o’er its Babel sounds

The blessed angels sing.

Yet with the woes of sin and strife

The world hath suffered long;

Beneath the angel-strain have rolled

Two thousand years of wrong;

And man at war with man hears not

The love song which they bring:

Oh hush the noise, ye men of strife

And hear the angels sing.

 For lo! The days are hastening on,

By prophets bards foretold,

When, with the ever-circling years,

Shall come the Age of Gold;

When peace shall over all the earth

Its ancient splendors fling,

And all the world give back the song

Which now the angels sing