[Old year 2024 – welcoming 2025]

The echo of Christmas is still fresh in our minds.  Christmas decorations are everywhere.  The nights are long and the days short and cold.

We are all enjoying leftovers and relaxing after the big preparations for a Christmas gathering.  What a joy it is to be able to come together!  We clean up with gratitude and praise for the privilege of provision and blessing.  This is a time for family and friends, a time to reach out to the lonely and share the blessing.

Perhaps not all of us had the opportunity to sing Christmas carols.  In our home, it’s part of a beloved family Christmas tradition.  We sing the  classics, the true carols that celebrate the coming of Jesus.  We also try to include the languages of those present.  Singing “Silent Night” in French or Italian and once or twice German as well, can be challenging, but at least we understand the essence of what we’re singing.  We know the melodies and the words, but do we grasp the message?

Do you sing the truth of that Silent Night that is called holy?  We reflect deeply and choose the context of our celebration so that we bring depth where emptiness or triviality might otherwise dominate.  Perhaps we no longer sing the old carols as much as we used to.

The words we sing, even if we don’t fully realize them, carry us into the New Year.  It is because of Christmas that we can celebrate the New Year—not with drunkenness and mindless dancing to escape worry, fear, and the darkness of another calendar year, but as children of the Day, children of the Kingdom of Light, as bearers of light.

“With joy, give thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of His holy people in the kingdom of light.” (Colossians 1:12)

“You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or the darkness.” (1 Thessalonians 5:5)

It might be time to resolve to read carols as poems before singing them. Christmas carols are, in essence, acts of worship, not just songs dictated by the date.  The words of these carols can carry us through challenging times.

Can you hear the joyful angel song as the shepherds did that night outside Bethlehem?  If you tune your ear and pay attention, you’ll hear God calling you as witness to this great event.  What a privilege!

“Give ear and come to Me; listen, that you may live...” (Isaiah 55:3)

Read along and “listen” with your soul.  The words of How great thou art say: “Then sings my soul.”  Do you sing with your soul?  Do you submit your will, intellect, and emotion to the words of truth?

Silent night! Holy night!
All is calm, all is bright
’round yon virgin mother and child!
Holy infant, so tender and mild,
sleep in heavenly peace,
sleep in heavenly peace.

Silent night! Holy night!
Shepherds quake at the sight.
Glories stream from heaven afar,
heav’nly hosts sing: “Alleluia!
Christ the Savior is born!
Christ the Savior is born!”

Silent night! Holy night!
Son of God, love’s pure light
radiant beams from Thy holy face
with the dawn of redeeming grace,
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth!
Jesus, Lord, at Thy birth!

Silent night! Holy night!
Wondrous star, lend thy light;
with the angels let us sing
“Alleluia” to our King:
“Christ the Savior is born!
Christ the Savior is born.”

We can’t include all our beautiful carols here, but we can resolve to intentionally comprehend the words we sing.  

Consider the words from one verse of the well-known carol It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, and hear the summary of our worldly woes over centuries.

“Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
The love-song which they bring;
Oh, hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.”

Similarly, the lyrics of Don Francisco’s Christmas Song powerfully convey the essence of the season:

In the center of the ages
The Lord talks with a girl
And by the words, He speaks
He gives a Savior to the world
The time grows to its fullness
And Mary’s Son is born
The promise’s fulfillment
Lies asleep now in her arms

He didn’t come to terrify
To judge or condescend
To call us all His servants
But to lift us as His friends
To save us all from Satan’s power
To reign at His right hand
In the little town of Bethlehem
When God became a man

The day the God of majesty
Has given to the Earth
A gift of such magnificence
We could never plumb its worth
And the rudeness of the setting
Just ignites the jewel’s fire
A pearl beyond the greatest price
The joy of man’s desire

Here is a translation of a song that was written for the southern hemisphere, a summer Christmas song.

Summer Christmas 

(Words by Juanita du Plessis and sung by Laurika Rauch)

Welcome, oh silent night of peace
Under the Southern Cross
As voices from the ancient past
Echo across starry skies.

Christmas comes, Christmas comes,
Give God the glory.
Grant a bright summer Christmas
In this land, oh Lord.

Do you hear how soft bells chime
In a tongue of glory?
Look, even the nightly silence
Tells the old, old story.

Feel His warm love now
As we celebrate the day
When He sent His Son to us,
Our greatest Christmas gift.

Whether old or new, the message of truth—the proclamation of Jesus—is a powerful prophetic statement over those around you, but first over yourself.  

“By day, the Lord directs His love,
At night His song is with me—a prayer to the God of my life.” (Psalm 42:8)

You shall have a song
As in the night when a holy festival is kept,
And gladness of heart as when one goes with a flute,
To come into the mountain of the Lord,
To the Mighty One of Israel. (Isaiah 30:29)

Will the meaning of a Christmas carol guide your New Year’s celebration? If you sing on New Year’s Eve, will you sing of the Mighty One of Israel?

Joy, peace, hope, and love are God’s Christmas gifts. They mark the New Year, and we cannot live without the full content and powerful impact of those words in our lives. Remember them and keep singing, even when Advent Sundays fade into memory.

Don’t forget. Write them on the table of your heart and keep singing!

Let not mercy and truth forsake you; Bind them around your neck, Write them on the tablet of your heart.  (Proverbs 3:3)