In not many days the singing of the O-Antiphons will commence in many churches of the West. Anyone raised as an Evangelical like me will recognize the hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, derived from the 7 Antiphons. Or least that used to be true (I don't know how many 25-year olds today know the words of that hymn). Whatever the case may be, in the middle of our busyness of Christmas preparation, a daily meditation on each of the antiphons will be beneficial. Each addresses Christ with a messianic title derived from the Old Testament, particularly the book of Isaiah. Fr. William Saunders has written a nice summary here of the Antiphons, with some history of them, noting that reading the initial letter of each title in reverse order produces the Latin ero cras, "Tomorrow I will come," pointing to Christmas eve. Emmanuel, Rex Gentium, Oriens, Clavis David, Radix Jesse, Adonai, Sapientia (reverse order in which they are sung.) The antiphons commence on December 17 with O Sapientia, and so on to O Emmanuel on the 23rd.
Christ did not come in a vacuum, but in the fullness of time, the full flowering of the nation of Israel and the seed of Abraham. Two Sundays before Christmas the Orthodox observe the Sunday of the Forefathers: "Let us believers extol today all the fathers before the law: Abraham the Friend of God, Isaac born after the promise, Jacob with the twelve heads of the tribes, David the most meek" and the prophet Daniel.
The Old Testament is riddled with promises: to Eve ("crush the head of the serpent"), Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jaacob, Moses, David, and then the promises of deliverance and redemption given by many prophets. The dramatic flow and energy of the Old Testament is forward and not back: there is a Promise. That that Promise was fulfilled in history and that we today are shaped by the Promise (Emmanuel) is so clear: we look back, not forward like Isaiah, and our gaze meets his gaze in a town called Bethlehem. The O-Antiphons help us to stand back and look forward as they did, giving us another eye with which to see the Christ Child: one from the past looking forward, the other eye our own, from the present looking back. We see him in full.
Now in reply to the drive of the secularizing powers to cleanse the public square of the Nativity, we can say, "Imagine a world without Christmas. Take it away, take away the longing and expectation of Israel and count it as so much mumbo-jumbo to be filed in the basements of museums of antiquity with other parchments, ancient inscriptions, shards, fossils of humanity's childhood." The world, apart from Christ, continues to long for being "born again" with new hope, does it not? Do not business and politicians capitalize on such longings? Do not the sellers and the sellers of themselves make promises that you will be better off, saved, if you will, if you buy them or their wares?
We are attracted to new promises because we know that what we have doesn't satisfy. But through the thousands of years, millions continue to testify that finding the Christ Child is enough. There is no other Birth like this one. He is the one Israel waited for, and now, he continues to wait for us. To come. To hear. To learn. To be born anew.
My daughter knows the lyrics, in Latin, no less. I credit the Medieval Babes, a wonderful group specializing in medieval music, kind of like Anonymous Four on acid.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 13, 2008 at 05:44 PM
Mr. Kushiner,
I didn't know you grew up evangelical. Have you ever written about why you no longer are?
Posted by: Josiah Roelfsema | December 15, 2008 at 08:46 AM
While the Western Church has the O Antiphons, in the East we speak of the "Preparation" for the Nativity, and as the Feast draws near, there are a series of "Preparation Troparia and Kontakia", which address both the human and cosmic dimensions of the Incarnation. Each is in its own unique festal tone, some of which are remarkably moving.
20 December
Troparion of the Preparation (Tone 4)
Bethlehem, make ready,
For Eden has been opened for all;
Ephrata, be alert,
For the Tree of Life
Has blossomed forth from the Virgin in the cave.
Her womb has become a spiritual paradise,
Wherein the Divine Fruit was planted--
And if we eat of it, we shall live, and not die like Adam.
Christ is coming forth to bring back to life
The likeness that had been lost in the beginning.
Kontakion of the Preparation (Tone 3)
Today the Virgin is on her way
To the cave where she will give birth
In a manner beyond understanding
To the Word who is, in all eternity.
Rejoice, therefore, universe,
When you hear it heralded:
With the angels and the shepherds,
Glorify him who chose to be seen
As a new-born babe,
While remaining God in all eternity.
21 December (Second Day of Preparation)
Kontakion of the Preparation (Tone 2)
Since we contemplate the One
Who is the Master of creation
Now wrapped in swaddling clothes in Bethelehem,
Let us sing hymns to his Mother
In advance of the Feast;
She is quickened with joy like every mother,
For she has held the Son of God within her womb.
Also sung during this time is the beautiful hymn, "House of Ephrata"
O house of Ephrata,
The holy city,
The glory of the prophets,
Beautify the house
In which the divine one is born.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 15, 2008 at 12:16 PM
"O Come, O Come Immanuel" - I always knew the first verse by memory and what it meant. Now I've got the key to the rest of them!
Posted by: Clifford Simon | December 16, 2008 at 03:19 AM
On an unrelated note, the music of "O Come, O Come Immanuel" gets my vote for the most daring and ingenious harmonization (of a plainsong original) out of all Christmas carols. Immanuel's well-known harmony is credited to Thomas Hellmore in 1856.
(I claim that Christmas carols are the last still-living, *polyphonic* music in Western civilization. It adds to my enjoyment of the carols, that Bach, Beethoven, and Schumann are museum pieces, but we are still singing carols.)
*****
Checking cyberhymnal.org (highly recommended site!) for the date of composition, I incidentally discovered also why I never learned all eight verses: the Baptist hymnal only prints three of them! I never knew there were more.
The Baptist hymnal also omits verses of Topaldy's "Rock of Ages" in a disappointing way, but it does print *every* verse of "We three kings of Orient are" - a song that my friends and I denegrate year after year for its tedium!
Posted by: Clifford Simon | December 16, 2008 at 03:56 AM
Many hymns have multiple verses that are omitted in standard hymnals. In older hymnbooks this was primarily due to length -- you seldom see a hymn with more than 5 verses, because of the time it takes to sing them.
I have no problem with 'We Three Kings,' but I do find 'O Little Town of Bethlehem' to be rather boring, musically at least. One Christmas song I used to dislike, but have grown to appreciate over the years is 'It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.'
If there's one thing I miss from my Protestant background it's the singing of the traditional Western Christmas hymns and carols. I have to settle for listening to them on CD for the most part. Orthodox celebration of Easter, however, makes up for it and then some.
Posted by: Rob G | December 16, 2008 at 06:20 AM
>>>Many hymns have multiple verses that are omitted in standard hymnals. <<<
Strangely enough, Jewish kids often know these verses, while Christian kids don't. I have no idea why that is so.
>>>If there's one thing I miss from my Protestant background it's the singing of the traditional Western Christmas hymns and carols.<<<
Oh, but you have plenty of great carols from Central and Easter Europe--
Nebo i zemlya (the Ur-carol), Divnaja novina, Nova Radost Stela, Bos sja Razdajet, Vo Viflemi--there are dozens of great song. Of course, only the converts know all the verses to those, too--and in Slavonic, no less.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 16, 2008 at 06:38 AM
"you have plenty of great carols from Central and Eastern Europe"
True, but since I didn't grow up with them they don't have the same resonance for me as the Western ones do -- they don't reflect family and personal tradition in the same way.
Posted by: Rob G | December 16, 2008 at 07:51 AM
OK, I can see that. But then, I also grew up with the traditional Western carols, and I love and revere them as well (as the Jewish Kid, I loved them even more than my Goyische friends). Of course, my wife and children and I all entered the Church together, and so we have these Slavonic carols as something we share, an added layer on the foundation of Western carols. I am in the process of picking up a few Greek and Arabic ones, now--Eastern Christianity is truly multicultural.
Posted by: Stuart Koehl | December 16, 2008 at 08:46 AM
>>>I have no problem with 'We Three Kings,' but I do find 'O Little Town of Bethlehem' to be rather boring, musically at least. One Christmas song I used to dislike, but have grown to appreciate over the years is 'It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.'<<<
There's an alternate tune for "O Little Town of Bethlehem" in the Anglican Hymnal that is better, described as "English melody arr. by R. Vaughan Williams." Also another one for "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear," described as "English melody, adapted by Arthur Seymour Sullivan."
I set the hymns for our church. It's a job that can be tedious -- I have to go through the recommended hymns in the back of the hymnal (little is optional in the Anglican Catholic Church) and figure out which ones the people know and don't know, and which ones are so unbearable I refuse to have them, and find substitutes from the Morning or Evening Prayer recommendations. But at Christmas I love the job because I can choose the carols. This year Holy Innocents falls on the first Sunday after Christmas, and that has its own hymns, so we only get Christmas Eve and the second Sunday after Christmas to sing Christmas songs. Meanwhile, the Lutherans whose church we use have their hymn board covered with the numbers for Christmas carols, which they sing during Advent, while we don't.
Posted by: Judy K. Warner | December 16, 2008 at 10:07 AM
**There's an alternate tune for "O Little Town of Bethlehem" ... Also another one for "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear"**
I can't think of them offhand, but I may know them to hear them. I have quite a few CDs of English carols which include alternate or lesser-known settings. There are probably at least a half-dozen settings for 'While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks,' for instance.
Posted by: Rob G | December 16, 2008 at 11:32 AM
>>Meanwhile, the Lutherans whose church we use have their hymn board covered with the numbers for Christmas carols, which they sing during Advent, while we don't.<<
That's because the old Lutheran hymnal (Lutheran Worship, the blue one) has a grand total of 23 Advent hymns (12-34). A full third of them aren't familiar enough for the congregation to know, and another sixth or so are just plain terrible*--so we're only left with 12 songs to sing for Advent.
The solution? Sing carols that aren't explicitly celebratory, like "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" or "O, Come All Ye Faithful" (which is, despite being upbeat, a hymn of ascent--we're going to Ephrata, come with us!).
I'm not sure if the new Lutheran Service Book has better selections for Advent, but we're still a Lutheran Worship church.
*Truthfully, Lutheran Worship butchers everything with "thee"s to "you"s and "men" to "friends" and...it's just a terrible hymnal.
Posted by: Michael | December 16, 2008 at 12:17 PM
>>>That's because the old Lutheran hymnal (Lutheran Worship, the blue one) has a grand total of 23 Advent hymns (12-34). <<<
The 1940 Anglican hymnal we use has only 11 in the Advent section, but there's a list of 16 more that are suitable, such as "Watchman, tell us of the night."
>>>There are probably at least a half-dozen settings for 'While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks,' for instance.<<<
Did you ever hear the shape-note version? It's great. I've also heard "Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer" sung as a shape-note song to that tune, which makes me laugh.
Posted by: Judy K. Warner | December 16, 2008 at 01:44 PM
Sherbourne?
Posted by: Peter Gardner | December 16, 2008 at 02:40 PM
"Sherbourne?"
That's the 'shape note' one I know, and it's a good one.
Posted by: Rob G | December 16, 2008 at 03:02 PM
Yes, that's it.
Peter, don't you go to the Arlington sing sometimes?
Posted by: Judy K. Warner | December 17, 2008 at 09:26 AM