O Holy Night....

 I am not the sort of person who frequently gets emotional over hymns or sacred songs. There are ones I *like* a lot, but there are few where the words in them regularly make me say to myself going into them "you will tear up, try not to tear up" (I don't like when I show strong emotion in public.

But one that gets me is O Holy Night. For years, when I lived in Illinois, my parents' church had the Christmas Eve service as a mostly-musical program, and many years one of the altos from the choir sang it - or a tenor from the local college arts department.

I particularly like the third verse in English:

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is Love and His gospel is Peace;
Chains shall he break, for the slave is our brother,
And in his name all oppression shall cease,
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful Chorus raise we;
Let all within us praise his Holy name!

I always wondered - the original French lyrics are a little different there - if maybe an Abolitionist was the one who did the translation* - because of the pointed reference to the end of oppression, and "the slave is our brother"

And yes, apparently so. According to this article, a Unitarian minister in Boston translated the French lyrics (and there's another whole story about the original author of them) in 1855.  

Another article also gives some of the "controversy" about the song, at least in Europe: Adolphe Adam, the composer, was Jewish. (Europe has a sadly long history - as does the US, for a lot of its history - of excluding or "othering" Jewish people). And Placide Coppeau, the lyricist - well, some sites say "wasn't too keen on religion" or similar euphemisms, but apparently he was an atheist. (Then again: Vaughn Williams was apparently not a believer, and yet he wrote some lovely hymn tunes)

And again, they reference that the translation was in part, an abolitionist song.

 (*Most lyrical translations are not purely faithful; what scans in one language very much does not in another, in most cases. Some try to be more faithful than others but in my experience in many hymns and pop songs there's an attempt to capture the spirit of the song without getting the actual exact words)

But I admit, this year - we sang it in church on the 10th - it got me really hard, especially the part about "all oppression shall cease." I admit I am not very geopolitically astute but I look at the middle east and my general feeling is I don't care what side a civilian is on - children and old people and folks who really only are interested in living their lives should not be dying, and targeting civilians is wrong. And I heard some political fool talking about "well Ukraine should just give Russia some of Ukraine's territory in the name of peace" and hold up my man, Russia were the invaders there and I feel that they are pretty clearly the oppressors, and also, if you give them some now, next year they'll want more....and there are so many other cases in the world, large and small, of people mistreating each other.

But yes, the world is in a mess. I suppose it has always been such, but I feel it harder this year than I have in a while.

And one of the things I love so much about the traditional Christmas hymns and often tear up during them is that they do promise a better future, a time when we are at genuine peace, and there's no violence or oppression, and people are genuinely cared for, and......just the image of a better world.

It was hard to find a version of O Holy Night that's like how I would want to hear it - very simple, just the singer and either a piano or organ accompaniment, but this one with Jennifer Hudson comes close:

 

 

And here is another, very nice rendition, for acapella male singers:

 And yet another one, with a "treble singer" (a young man whose voice has not changed yet) and a singer from Wales doing it as a duet. (Wales has a very long tradition of choral music singing; their men's choirs are fairly well known in choral-music circles)