What Is Your Favorite Christmas Carol?

[Rev. Spaceman]

That's a nice pietistic hymn. Is the tune decent? :-)

The tune is beautiful.  Google the Danish title and you can hear various people sing it.  By "Pietistic," I suppose what you mean is that the text is intensely personal.  Yes it is, as are many other beloved hymns, one of which is "Ah, Holy Jesus."

[Dave Benke]

Blessed Day of the Incarnation to all - our church choir sang this one at the International Arrivals Terminal at Kennedy a couple of weeks ago, and again on Christmas Eve.  We have a lot of angelic fun with the last part sung in double time.  This is Mariah Carey's version, there are many many more, some of which I like better in the more southern Gospel mode - Jesus, O What a Wonderful Child:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2azO6P2QfQ

Dave Benke

[John_Hannah]

A blessed Christmas from the ALPB (editors, staff, moderators, subscribers, et. al.) to all our participants in Forum Online.

I echo everything that Cardinal Dolan said today on CBS, "This Morning."

Peace, JOHN

[Richard Johnson]

After having said that "O Holy Night" was not among my favorites, I must report: We heard it sung so beautifully last night. We're in Houston with our son, daughter-in-law and her parents, awaiting the birth of our first grandchild (as well as celebrating the birth of the newborn King). This is a wistful Christmas--first one since retirement from parish ministry, so first one in nearly 40 years not preaching and presiding at the Eucharist. We were in a quandary about where to worship last night. Picked out a couple of possibilities near where our son lives, but weren't real excited about it. We happened to drive by St. John the Divine Episcopal Church, and after looking at their website, decided to go to their late service (a little further away, but still just a short drive). It was absolutely fantastic. It began with a thirty-minute "choral prelude" (mostly choir, but some congregational carols), so I got my "lessons and carols" fix (albeit without lessons  ). This concluded with a remarkable soprano filling this large church with "O Holy Night." Then the Eucharist was festive, gracious, and beautiful. The sermon was a good one (if perhaps a bit long and a little sentimental for my tastes). A highlight was the choir singing "Jauchzet, frohlocket" from the Christmas Oratorio as the offertory. A lovely service in just about every respect.

[Richard Johnson]

One thing I really have missed is the opportunity to sing some of my favorite "non-standard" carols, such as this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BHA4J02bEI&feature=share&list=PL200ldyNkmaL01qhFjtPf-Yw6zY7RDna6

I always liked to sing these in church the Sunday or two after Christmas, when a lot of people are tired of the more familiar carols (since they've been hearing them everywhere--except church--all through Advent).

[Brian Stoffregen]

One thing I really have missed is the opportunity to sing some of my favorite "non-standard" carols, such as this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BHA4J02bEI&feature=share&list=PL200ldyNkmaL01qhFjtPf-Yw6zY7RDna6

I always liked to sing these in church the Sunday or two after Christmas, when a lot of people are tired of the more familiar carols (since they've been hearing them everywhere--except church--all through Advent).

I use that as the Gospel Acclamation during the Christmas season.

[Donald_Kirchner]

That's a nice pietistic hymn. Is the tune decent? :-)

The tune is beautiful.  Google the Danish title and you can hear various people sing it.  By "Pietistic," I suppose what you mean is that the text is intensely personal.  Yes it is, as are many other beloved hymns, one of which is "Ah, Holy Jesus."

That's one way of putting it. IOW a focus on the subjective, on self, and looking within, i.e., running things in the way of the law. On this Feast of the Nativity of our Lord, I'd rather run things in the way of the Gospel. i like it when Jesus is driving the verbs.

http://www.ctsfw.edu/document.doc?id=294

[Dave Benke]

That's a nice pietistic hymn. Is the tune decent? :-)

The tune is beautiful.  Google the Danish title and you can hear various people sing it.  By "Pietistic," I suppose what you mean is that the text is intensely personal.  Yes it is, as are many other beloved hymns, one of which is "Ah, Holy Jesus."

That's one way of putting it. IOW a focus on the subjective, on self, and looking within, i.e., running things in the way of the law. On this Feast of the Nativity of our Lord, I'd rather run things in the way of the Gospel. i like it when Jesus is driving the verbs.

http://www.ctsfw.edu/document.doc?id=294

Are these therewith removed from use and abjured as pietistic incursions, lesser hymnic lights in the song-firmament?

"Lord, Thee I love with all my heart."
"Thee Will I Love, My Strength, My Tower."
"I Come O Savior, To Thy Table"
"I Know That My Redeemer Lives"
"I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light"
"If Thou But Trust in God to Guide Thee"

On the other hand, "Jesus, What a Wonderful Child" is non-pietistic and can be embraced.  That's a good thing.

Dave Benke

[LutherMan]

Christmas Blessings to all here at the forum...

[Donald_Kirchner]

Are these therewith removed from use and abjured as pietistic incursions, lesser hymnic lights in the song-firmament?

"Lord, Thee I love with all my heart."
"Thee Will I Love, My Strength, My Tower."
"I Come O Savior, To Thy Table"
"I Know That My Redeemer Lives"
"I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light"
"If Thou But Trust in God to Guide Thee"

On the other hand, "Jesus, What a Wonderful Child" is non-pietistic and can be embraced.  That's a good thing.

Dave Benke

No.

[Rev. Spaceman]

Are these therewith removed from use and abjured as pietistic incursions, lesser hymnic lights in the song-firmament?

"Lord, Thee I love with all my heart."
"Thee Will I Love, My Strength, My Tower."
"I Come O Savior, To Thy Table"
"I Know That My Redeemer Lives"
"I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light"
"If Thou But Trust in God to Guide Thee"

On the other hand, "Jesus, What a Wonderful Child" is non-pietistic and can be embraced.  That's a good thing.

Dave Benke

No.

And I think Brorson's hymn simply communicates that the good news of Christ has an impact on our lives.  I think it also communicates the theology of the cross.

[Donald_Kirchner]

A suggestion by Dr. Nagel that I try to meet: Read Go Giertz "The Hammer of God " once a year. Guards against Pietism.

[Samuel_Zumwalt]

Thirty-two Christmasses ago, I was a newly ordained and serving a year-long CPE residency at Parkland Hospital in Dallas. Because Parkland was both the county hospital and a major trauma hospital associated with the UT Southwestern Medical School, everything bad came there by ambulance or helicopter. It was the closest I've been to a war zone. The contrast with parttime simultaneous service in a suburban parish was, at times, surreal.

While pulling a late night on-call as the only chaplain in the complex with death and destruction all around, in-between calls, I came across Abp. Johon Olof Wallin's Christmas hymn found at LBW #73: "All Hail to You, O Blessed Morn" (sung to the "Wie Schoen Leuchtet" tune). The third stanza moves me deeply to this day:

"He will, like us, shed bitter tears, will know our needs yet still our fears and send His Spirit's power. He will reveal His Father's will, our cup of woe with mercy fill to sweeten sorrow's hour....
Struggling, suff'ring, He, by dying dearly buying our salvation, opens wide the gates of heaven."

[Rev. Spaceman]

A suggestion by Dr. Nagel that I try to meet: Read Go Giertz "The Hammer of God " once a year. Guards against Pietism.

I am well aware of the Hammer of God, having read it a number of times.  And I'm well aware of the possible dangers of subjectivism.  There certainly are aspects of historical Pietism that can be theologically critiqued.  But you're ignoring a large part of history is you just dismiss Pietism as a whole.  It (and coming up with a single, accepted definition of Pietism is hard indeed) was a corrective to established churches that were failing in their task of feeding people with the Word of God.  Subjective and objective, they always need to be held in proper tension.  I think it's important to look at a historical phenomenon with a little more nuance.

[Donald_Kirchner]

So sagt Spener.

"Most of the standard treatments of pietism see pietism as a necessary corrective to the alleged frigidity and formality of Lutheran orthodoxy, Pietism is said to have recaptured the vitality of Luther's evangelical insight. Examples of the living piety of orthodoxy as embodied in Johann Gerhard's devotional writings or the hymnody of Philip Nicolai and Paul Gerhardt are overlooked or else they are classified as a germinal form of pietism. Pietism's reliance on a selected slice of the early Luther to the exclusion of his later sacramental writings is overlooked. Whatever deficiencies there may have been in the church life of Lutheran orthodoxy, it cannot be claimed that pietism is a return to Luther.

Pietism was seeking something new. Jeremiah Ohl summarizes the outcome of pietism's search as it relates to worship: "...in a word, what Pietism set out to do finally resulted not in bringing about again a proper union between the objective and the subjective, but in the overthrow of the former and the triumph of the latter. The sacramental and the sacrificial were divorced, and the sacrificial alone remained. Public worship ceased to be a celebration of redemption, and became only an act of edification" (Ohl, 70-71). Pietism succeeded in introducing a new theology of worship grounded not in the delivery of the fruits of Christ's redeeming work but rather in the edification of the saint." [Pless]