Some Favorite Spiritual Songs for the Christmas Season

Some Favorite Spiritual Songs for the Christmas Season December 16, 2016

Annunciation 2

Here we are winging into the Christmas season. And with it comes Christmas music. Frankly, some of it puts my teeth on edge. Occasionally I fear diabetes just hearing the melody. And, some of it moves me deeply. I kind of like how some chestnuts have passed along over generations, for instance Bing Cosby’s White Christmas. I don’t particularly like the song. I don’t like “secular” Christmas music. Although I don’t particularly mind it in the background, you know, as part of that sense of a thread passing through time. That has a sweetness to it I find moving.

But then there’s music I actually like.

Sort of starting at the beginning, among my favorites for the season is Sting’s Gabriel’s Song.

And with that Mary’s response. I’ve never really found a version of the Magnificat that totally works for me. But, this comes close, Melissa Maricich singing John Michael Talbot’s adaptation of Mary’s hymn.

Of course I must tip a hat to Unitarians here. After all without the Unitarians there wouldn’t have been a New England Christmas at all. Unitarian minister Edmund Hamilton Sears gave us It Came Upon a Midnight Clear. Here’s a version just a little over produced by old Blue Eyes, himself…

Of course for me seared into my heart that version of Silent Night by Simon & Garfunkel. (Thank you, Jan for the reminder.)

And then there’s that other stuff going on, while the family is doing its thing. Here’s Blondie’s We Three Kings.

But, my favorite hymn of the season has to be Adeste Fideles, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. How any Christmas eve service needs to begin. If you want to ask me. Here, for instance with all the stops pulled out at Westminster Cathedral.

It ceases to be a matter of belief, and becomes some ancient longing, a call, and a response.

(Picture credit: Annunciation by Allan Rohan Crite)


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