Rebel to Redeemed…Sharing HIS Kind of Love
It Came Upon a Midnight Clear was a Christmas poem written by Edmund Sears. This is a Christmas Carol that doesn’t focus on the holy family, but the song of the angels. Luke 2:14 says the angels said “Peace on the Earth, good will to men.” Edmund Hamilton Sears was born in 1810. He earned a degree from Harvard Divinity […]
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Angels We Have Heard on High commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ found in the Gospel of Luke. The song focuses on the shepherds encounter with the angels foretelling of the birth of the newborn child. Reports say that in 129 A.D. Pope Telesphorus ordained that the “Gloria” be sung at the Christmas Eve midnight mass. The phrase became known […]
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Christmas day has passed, but not the reason for the season. What if we were to keep the Christmas spirit year round? Christmas is a season of love and giving. Everyone seems to be in better spirits and more willing to lend a helping hand after this time. What if we kept this spirit year round? There are many in […]
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African Americans have a rich musical history through the use of passing down stories in the guise of a song. These songs are called spirituals and the slaves often sung them in the fields, while working and in their celebrations. These songs have a feeling of “incredible majesty and haunting beauty.” Go Tell It on the Mountain originated as a […]
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Mary, How Did You Feel?–Part 1 You were such a young girl When it all began Sprung from such innocence Oh, Mary how did you feel? What was it like to be so young? To become engaged at just fifteen Looking to build a home of your own Oh Mary, how did you feel? Then the […]
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Christmas brings it’s own temptations with parties, family gatherings and celebrations. However, the most important thing to remember is that Christmas is about family. Yes, we should make healthy choices during the holidays. We don’t want to completely blow our diet. However, Christmas is the time to focus on our family and enjoy the time together. We can resolve not […]
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As we prepare to celebrate Christmas day, how often do we leave Jesus out of the day? The day that we celebrate His birth. After all, Jesus is the Reason for the season. Yet, we often forget to say as much as a Thank You to Him for coming to earth as a baby, living on earth 33 […]
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This is a beautiful Christmas song that Daddy and I performed together many times. The lyrics and music were written by William H. Neidlinger in 1890. No other information is known about this beautiful Christmas carol. The song has been recorded and performed numerous times over the years by various artists. Maybe his work was inspired by the passage in […]
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What would happen if Ebenezer Scrooge were at the birth of Jesus? How would Scrooge be effected by the birth of the Christ Child? That is exactly what the book The First Christmas Carol—A Miser, A Manger, A Miracle by Marianne Jordan explores. Ebenezer is concerned with nothing but his pocketbook. He owns a local inn in Bethlehem and demands […]
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Imagine traveling to the Holy Land and being inspired by the places where Jesus was born, walked, died and rose from the grave. To ride by horseback out to the fields where the shepherds attended their sheep and the angels appeared to them. That’s exactly how the lyrics for O Little Town of Bethlehem were inspired. Later the author wrote […]
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The hymn we sing today as Hark! The Herald Angels Sing has had many alterations since it originated. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing first appeared in the 1739 Hymns and Sacred Poems. This is one of the few Christmas hymns written in the 17th and early 18th Centuries, after the English Puritan’s abolished Christmas Carols for being part of a […]
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In 1847, Placide Cappeau de Roquemaure was most likely shocked when the parish priest asked him to write a poem for Christmas Mass. De Roquemaure was the commissioner of wines in a small French town and well known for his poetry. He was an unlikely person for the priest to ask to write this poem, in the fact that he was […]
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Franz Schubert composed the popular Catholic hymn in 1825, as part of his Opus 52. He titled the song “Ellens dritter Gesang” or Ellen’s Third Song. Philip Adam Storck translated and published the poem Lady of the Lake into German in 1819. This was the inspiration for Schubert’s work. The song was composed as a setting for Sir Walter Scott’s […]
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Joy to the World is a paraphrase of the Psalm 98. Originally the Christmas Carol was titled “The Messiah’s Coming and Kingdom” and first appeared in Watt’s 1719 “Psalms of David Imitated in the Language of the New Testament” hymnal. The music is believed to be adapted from parts of Handel’s Messiah by Lowell Mason. “And heaven and nature sing” […]
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O Come All Ye Faithful was originally written in Latin. No one is sure who the original text was written by. Many people have been given the credit, but most likely an order of monks wrote the text. The original text consisted of four Latin verses, which were translated and used in the hymn we now know today. The composer […]
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Silent Night has become a favorite Christmas Carol around the world. The hymn was never meant to be the legend it’s become. Joseph Mohr was the assistant priest at the Church of St. Nicholas in the Tyrol Alps of Austria. Father Mohr and Franz Gruber, the village schoolmaster and church organist, were discussing the fact that they believed the perfect […]
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I love to attend a performance of Handel’s Messiah each Christmas. So where did it begin? Actually, although the oratorio is most often performed at Christmas time, the premiere took place at Easter time. The oratorio was composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel. An oratorio is a large musical composition for orchestra, choir and soloists. Charles Jennens compiled the scriptural […]
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Christmas Shoes came out just a few months after Daddy died of cancer. The song and story really resonated with me and continues to touch me even years later. The story first appeared in the book, Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul. In the book Helga Schmidt tells the story of a young brother and sister trying to buy their […]
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This is my mother’s favorite carol, so I wanted to learn more about the origin of the song for her. Noel is the French word for Christmas. The French word is from the Latin word natalis, meaning birthday. The song is a narrative of the birth of Christ. The First Nowell is a traditional classical English carol. Researchers believe the […]
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This popular Christmas carol was originally thought to have been written by Martin Luther for his own children and later passed on to German mothers. That legend has since been disproven. The first two stanza’s of the song first appeared in the Little Children’s Book published in 1885 by the John Church Company in Philadelphia. In the hymnal compiled by […]
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