Christmas Carols - Audiences

Working on this morning’s post inspired me to sort through these carols in another way.

I find it instructive and edifying to consider who is being addressed by the texts we sing in church. While we might assume that we’re frequently singing to God, a lot of the time, we’re not. That’s part of the tradition. It happens in the Psalms.

And so I have taken the same carols that I sorted earlier by the Gospels from which they draw content and have sorted them according to their audiences. I’ve suggested a further layer of classification by trying to characterize how they are address those audiences.

Many of the exhorting carols contain aspects of proclamation, but if there was any aspect of exhortation, I listed them as exhortation, not proclamation.

It turns out that very few of the carols are addressed to God in worship. I included those that do at the beginning of the list.

A number of the carols address a complex of audiences from verse to verse and several seem to be built around rhetorical addresses to Bethlehem, stars, and nature. On second thought, the addresses to stars and nature are more than rhetorical: the star is guiding and creation is being healed.

Finally, it occurs to me that many of these songs are designed to put us in the scene. They unfold it well and we sometimes sing as the wise men or the shepherds. They are more than a video of the Christmas story. They are experiences in virtual reality.

Prayer to Jesus

As with Gladness Men of Old

Away in a Manger

Exhortation to the faithful and the angels, then greeting and worship to Jesus

O Come, All Ye Faithful

Address to Bethlehem, exhortation to mornings stars, and prayer to Jesus

O Little Town of Bethlehem

Address to the star with the singers being the wise men

Brightest and Best

We Three Kings of Orient Are

Invitation/Exhortation to the Shepherds

Angels We Have Heard on High

Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow

Proclamation

Child in the Manger

How Great Our Joy (the singers are the Shepherds)

Silent Night

Sing We Now of Christmas

There’s a Song in the Air

General Exhortation

Go Tell It in the Mountain

Good Christian Men Rejoice

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing

Infant Holy, Infant Lowly

It Came upon the Midnight Clear (specifically to men of strife and those beneath life’s crushing load)

Oh Come, Little Children

Gentle Mary Laid Her Child

The First Nowell

What Child Is This

Exhortation to angels, shepherds, sages, and saints

Angels, from the Realms of Glory

Exhortation to heaven, nature, and every heart

Joy to the World

Hertford United Methodist Church in Hertford, N.C.