What’s the Meaning of All the Non-Christmas-y Imagery in “Cold December Flies Away”?

I’ve done my usual going-far-afield process in trying to decipher this carol, and found that, as usual, Liberties Have Been Taken with the original text, this one from Catalonia. (That’s a region of Spain that speaks a dialect called Catalan; you may be aware that there’s a separatist movement there that seeks to have independence from Spain. The tune, by the way, is apparently Catalonian also, as I’ve seen no composer’s name anywhere.) To start off this post, then, here’s the original text and a quite literal translation:

And here’s a more singable text that I’ve performed myself with my own choir:

Cold December flies away at the rose-red splendor,
April’s crowning glory breaks while the whole world wonders,
At the holy unseen pow’r of the tree that bears the flow’r.
On the blessed tree blooms the rose-red flow’r.
On the tree blooms the rose here in love’s own garden.
Full and strong in glory.

In the hopeless time of sin shadows deep had fallen.
All the world lay under death. Eyes were closed in sleeping.
But when all seemed lost in sight, came the sun whose golden light
Brings the endless joy of our hope’s bright dawning.

Now the bud has come to bloom, and the world awakens.
In the lily’s purest flow’r dwells a wondrous fragrance.
And it spreads to all the earth from the moment of its birth;
In the flow’r it lives, and it spreads its heav’nly brightness,
Sweet perfume delightful.

You’ll notice that there’s no mention in the original text of a “tree” or of the rose it bears being “rose red” as in our version. Those words seem to be the addition of the translator for this particular arrangement, a guy with just the greatest name: Howard Hawhee. Since that’s such an original name I figured there’d be just one person with it, and indeed I found a Howard Ward Hawhee on Facebook and on a site called Hymnary.org. While he apparently spent his working life as an IT guy, he majored in comparative literature and linguistic/literary studies in college. This one translation is the only work credited to him. I did message him at one point to ask for any info he’d like to give me on why/how he did the translation, but I never heard back. So I am free to indulge in rampant speculation.

Let’s begin where both songs begin, with “cold December retires/flies away.” That’s pretty straightforward, as tradition holds that the Nativity took place in winter. (I think we all know that the origin of our date for Christmas is the winter solstice and also the Roman pagan holiday Saturnalia; as Christianity gained a foothold in the old Roman Empire it was often convenient to just use the old dates but add new significance to them.) The solstice was the turning point of the year since after that date the days would get longer; in that sense, winter was indeed flying away and spring was coming.

In the original lyrics the “rose” is clearly referring to Mary, as the “divine flower” is born from the rose which is young and virginal. But in Hawhee’s version the rose clearly refers to the Christ child, an idea that crops up in other carols, notably “Lo How A Rose E’er Blooming.”

Here’s where I’m going out on a limb to say that our translator’s use of “red” and “tree” are deliberate and that he’s using those words to refer to an idea that shows up in many carols old and new: that the birth of Christ is only the start of the story, that looming over that stable is the shadow of the Crucifixion, and that the purpose of the birth is “to do poor sinners good” to quote from the ancient carol “the Holly and the Ivy.”

Both the original text and Hawhee’s refer to the idea of the “sun” rising in the middle of the night. Two meanings are at play here: the star of Bethlehem (which I wrote about in connection with the Magi a number of years ago) and a wordplay on “sun/Son.” I was reminded as I wrote this of Psalm 2:12 from the lovely old King James translation: “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”

One last idea before I use up all of your patience: Hawhee has transferred the traditional symbolism of the lily as representing Mary to Christ. I’m going to plagiarize from myself here and quote from a post I wrote awhile back about why the Christ child is often represented as a rose in which I also discuss other flower symbolism in the Christmas story:

At some point the Christ Child acquired the title of “Christmas rose.” While Jesus is never called a rose in Scripture, there is a reference to the coming Messiah being a “branch” in Isaiah 11:1: “And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots.” The Song of Solomon says, “I am the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley.” (both references from the KJV), and this poetic statement has in some circles been made to refer to Christ; I’ve sang the old Gospel song “I Have Found a Friend in Jesus” in church many times, and it has the line:

He’s the Lily of the Valley, the Bright and Morning Star,
He’s the fairest of ten thousand to my soul.

Well, I’ve gone way over my self-imposed limit here, so I’d better quit. Here’s a lovely performance of this carol in its original language:

There are few YouTube performances that use Hawhee’s text; for some reason, the tune is very popular with handbell choirs. But here’s one I found:

And something I found when I was bopping around on YouTube–an individual video of this same carol but with a slightly different translation, performed by my own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale (although I wasn’t singing with them yet–but this was the first concert of theirs I ever attended)–

© Debi Simons