I classify this carol along with “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” as having a very confusing title. In order to understand the meaning we’ll have to dive into a little grammar wonkery, with some biblical doctrine along the way.
Okay. Everybody got that? The lyrics were written by an American Unitarian Universalist minister, Edmund H. Sears, and, notably, they do not mention the actual birth of Christ at all. Let’s look at the first two lines of the carol itself:
It came upon a [or the] midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
That first line’s wording can seem strange to us. “It came upon” could be rewritten as “It occurred at the time of.” If this were a fairy tale we might read, “It so happened” or even “Once upon a time.” And what’s this “midnight clear” business? Honestly, folks, in all the internet bopping around I’ve done about this carol I haven’t seen one explanation of why the author felt compelled to talk about the weather conditions at the time that the angels appeared. I guess he wanted to make sure that his readers could picture the angels in the night sky with no obscuring clouds as they sang their glorious ancient song. (Except that they didn’t sing.) So, to answer the question in the title, “it” refers to “that glorious song of old.” We could therefore rephrase the lines to read: “At midnight on a clear night long ago there was a glorious song.”
On to the next two lines of that first stanza:
From angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold.
Does the Gospel account of the Christmas story say anything about the angels playing harps, gold or not? No, no, no. Here’s how it happened for those shepherds out in the fields with their flocks:
And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, “Fear not!”
After that head angel has delivered the news of “a Savior, which is Christ the Lord,” we’re told:
Suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
No singing, no harps, no trumpets. It’s all declamatory. But the message in the carol is correct: That God is sending peace on the earth and His good will to men.
Although there are five stanzas in the original poem, three of them are most commonly used, so I’ll concentrate on those. The next stanza addresses the carol’s listeners:
And ye, beneath life’s crushing load,
whose forms are bending low,
who toil along the climbing way
with painful steps and slow,
look now! for glad and golden hours
come swiftly on the wing.
O rest beside the weary road,
and hear the angels sing!
The somber tone of this verse probably echoes the author’s state of mind when he wrote the words, as he’d suffered a breakdown from overwork in the years immediately preceding that time. The poem was published in 1849, when the US had just concluded its war with Mexico and revolutions were stirring in Europe. And while Sears couldn’t know this at the time, in a little over a decade the US would be plunged into the catastrophe and death of the Civil War. Note that he doesn’t say that the angels are going to somehow fix things; the “weary road” is still going to be there for the listeners to keep toiling along. Lines from one of the rarely-used stanzas show Sears’ emphasis on the present day:
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong.
On to the final stanza. Let me first give the original wording of the first four lines:
For lo! the days are hastening on
By prophet bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the age of gold.
These days, “prophet bards” is usually rendered “prophet[s] seen of old,” and “the age of gold” as “the time foretold.” I have to say that I like the old version better, although that preference may have something to do with the fact that I learned those words as a child. However phrased, though, Sears is looking forward to the day:
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing.
Although Sears ministered in a church that does not formally recognize the Trinity or the deity of Christ, here’s what I found about his personal beliefs:
Sears believed in a Christ fully human and fully divine, the incarnation of the Divine Word, and the mediator who alone could bridge “the awful gulf between God and man.” (Edward Hamilton Sears)
So I guess we can assume that his view of the future fits in with the biblical conception of the second coming of Christ and the establishment of his reign on earth. Heaven and earth will be in harmony—and who doesn’t want that?
I’m a sucker for boys’ choirs, so here’s one singing the American version:
And here’s the King’s College version. It’s not the tune we’re used to. The Brits use a different one, also lovely:
And then a sorta folk song version by a duet called Fox + Hound:
All Scripture references are from the King James Version of the Bible, public domain.
© Debi Simons
