O Come, O Come, Emmanuel

“O come, O come, Emmanuel” is the Advent song. While Christmas carols have started invading our space — piped over loudspeakers in stores, and even on the streets in some places — “O come, O come, Emmanuel” isn’t a Christmas carol; it’s about the anticipation. It’s about Advent. Here’s the first verse (the one everyone knows) for the first week of Advent:

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Israel,
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

The words are based on Isaiah 7:14:

The Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.

I’d heard “O Come” probably a hundred times before I really felt it. I connected with its beauty about five years ago, singing it at a Franciscan Friars of the Renewal Vespers service for Advent. There were about five hundred of us, in the dark, on our knees, singing it over and over for probably half an hour, and it entered me in a way that it hadn’t before. I became one with its ecstatic but restrained joy of expectation.

The song is very old — the words are a 19th-century English translation by John Mason Neale, but it uses the same exquisite tune as “Veni, veni, Emmanuel,” a 15th-century French plainsong hymn, which itself was based on an 8th-century Gregorian chant.

The video version above is by Sugarland from a Christmas special. It’s not that I don’t love a straight-up choral version, but Jennifer Nettles has perhaps the most beautiful and pure female contralto voice in music today, and I enjoy how they gave it a hint of country without messing with the melody at all.

Phil Fox Rose is a writer and editor based in New York City and Upstate New York. He blogs at Patheos at On The Way.