Category: Christmas

Christmas song: Love Came Down At Christmas

12/16/2015

Lyrics:
Love Came Down at Christmas

Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,
Love incarnate, love divine;
Worship we our Jesus:
But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,
Love shall be yours and love be mine,
Love to God and to all men,
Love for plea and gift and sign.

Written by Christina Rossetti, this poem was first published in 1885.
This simple poem has been set to music by a variety of composers.
Rosetti was a Victorian Era Poet. There has been some debate if she or EB Browning was the greatest woman poet of they Victorian Era. Browning is considered more intellectual but Rossetti having more of a lyric gift.

You can learn more about Christina Rosetti HERE.

If you are interested in learning more about hymns you can check out this link from Chestnut Grove.

Others in this series
Angels from the Realms of Glory.

Christmas History: Angels From the Realms of Glory

12/15/2015

Lyrics:
Angels from the realms of glory,
Wing your flight o'er all the earth;
Ye who sang creation's story,
Now proclaim Messiah's birth:
Come and worship,
Come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King!

Shepherds, in the fields abiding,
Watching o'er your flocks by night,
God with man is now residing,
Yonder shines the infant Light;
Come and worship,
Come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King!

Sages, leave your contemplations,
Brighter visions beam afar;
Seek the great desire of nations,
Ye have seen His natal star;
Come and worship,
Come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King!

Saints before the altar bending,
Watching long in hope and fear,
Suddenly the Lord, descending,
In His temple shall appear:
Come and worship,
Come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn King!

This last verse is usually omitted:
Sinners, wrung with true repentance,
Doomed for guilt to endless pains,
Justice now revokes your sentence,
Mercy calls you; break your chains . . .

Those first three verses... so very scriptural aren't they? Calling us to action, to see this baby Jesus. To see him as King, to realize that he is our hearts desire. That fourth verse showing us as we should be, bowing to the King of Kings, that hope that we hold dear at Christmas of Christ's return and then that last verse calling us to action, helping us to break chains that bind us. We really need to see these words don't we? To sing them in worship to our Saviour Jesus Christ.

History:
Written by Scottish poet James Montgomery. It is one of 400 hymns that he wrote. James Montgomery's parents were missionaries with the Moravian church.    Through their work, his parents lost their lives. Through the Moravian church he was able to get at least part of an education at Fulneck Seminary in Yorkshire, but his love of poetry made that a poor fit.   Eventually he became owner of a newspaper.

This Christmas Carol was originally written in 1816, As many young people do, he struggled with understanding the faith of his parents and started to dig into the bible a bit more, as he pondered the reason why their faith was so important they would die to share it. He was inspired by the words in Luke 2 where we read "And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest,
    and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”"
He published it in his paper and by 1825 it was being sung in churches.

In North America, the tune this carol is sung to, is Regent Square written by Henry Smart, but in the United Kingdom it is sung to a different tune "Iris" which is a French tune that Angels We have Heard on High is also sung too.   Hear the differences here.

Resources:
Hymn Story. Discover the Word. History of Hymns. Wiki. UK Carols.

Christmas Hymns Unit Study.

Review: The Carols of Christmas

12/6/2015

We sing them all season, Christmas carols. Reminding us of God's love. Many of them do a great job of that don't they? Good Christian Men Rejoice, O Come, O Come Emmanuel etc. In The Carols of Christmas, Andrew Gant takes us on a journey of discovery reviewing the history of these carols. It's an interesting ride.

Book Synopsis:
From Oxford professor and renowned British composer, a joyous account of the history behind our favorite carols.
Everyone loves a carol-in the end, even Ebenezer Scrooge. They have the power to summon up a special kind of mid-winter mood, like the aroma of gingerbread or the twinkle of lights on a tree. It's a kind of magic.
But how did they get that magic? Andrew Gant-choirmaster, church musician, university professor, and writer-tells the story of twenty of our favorite carols, each accompanied by lyrics and music, unraveling a captivating, and often surprising, tale of great musicians and thinkers, saints and pagans, shepherd boys and choirboys. Readers get to delve into the history such favorites as "Good King Wenceslas," "Away in a Manger," and "O, Tannenbaum," discovering along the way how "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing" came to replace "Hark, how all the welkin' ring" and how Ralph Vaughan Williams applied the tune of an English folk song about a dead ox to a poem by a nineteenth century American pilgrim to make "O Little Town of Bethlehem."
A charming book that brims with anecdote, expert knowledge, and Christmas spirit, this is a fittingly joyous account of one of the best-loved musical traditions.

My Thoughts:
I really like the lay out of the book, that instead of just talking about carols, it talked about the carols in regards to the Christmas Season.   In this book you will find 21 hymns, divided into 14 sections. These sections follow the entire Christmas Season from Advent through to Christmas Day to Epiphany.   I learned that December 26 is also known as St. Steven's Day.

In this book Andrew Gant focus is to draw people into the songs of the street, the carols that people would sing walking through the streets.   These are not the hymns made for singing in church, but the carols that everyday people would sing, that some, over time have become acceptable to sing in church.   :)

I would not call the book an easy read.   It delves into the history of each of the carols with each chapter ending with the musical score and the most commonly sung verses.   But if you are looking to get a thorough history on some of the songs and discover the difficulty in learning the origins of some of them.

It was interesting to read the history to "I Saw Three Ships"...learning that using the "I" was unusual as most did a collective "we" in songs.   The very original version of this carol started with one ship, and by the time it became more accepted it had three... as it is widely assumed there where three wisemen (when we actually don't know how many there were)... or it could be a reference to the Trinity.

That's the thing about looking at these old carols...words change, the beat they are in changes sometimes fro 4/4 time to 3/4 time... sometimes it is due to the fact the composer was uneducated musically but liked to sing, and sometimes it changed as the song went from one place to another.

If you are looking for a book that thoroughly looks at the history of some of the Christmas songs that we know and love, this book does exactly that. You can see the delight of the author as he learns the history of the carols.

Product Details:
Received: Hardcover book
Title: The Carols of Christmas
Author: Andrew Gant
Pages: 217
Type: Non-fiction
Reviewed for: BookLookBloggers

Christmas Craft Fun

11/27/2015

A while back I issued an invitation to the folks in my homeschool group. Come join us for a craft day. We'll make Christmas crafts...the ones that pop up on facebook so frequently.

Two families responded to that invitation but only one manged to make it here. Having one family here made it easy for this introverted family to just relax and have fun. :) We had a blast.

I had pulled up a variety of crafts that I found. Some simple ones and some more complicated.

These were supposed to be hot chocolate, mints, marshmallow jars, but in this house we are somewhat flexible in the "this is what you should do" rules.

The children experimented with what they wanted to have in the snowmen and how to fit them all together.

I loved what the children did with the pinecones. One became an elf, another a Christmas tree. The tree becoming an ornament for the tree.

A stuffed felt Christmas tree joined them. I got this inspiration from the trees up at Fanshawe Pioneer Village that we recently went to.

Our sock snowman proved a hit! Check out how they are decked out. :)

I like offering options about how children should engage themselves in a craft and the variety is great is it not? :)

if you want to know how to make them, check out this youtube video.

We ended up having a whole family of these delightful clay pot snowme n. They all looked different, one had a baseball cap, another a pink hat, all had different faces and different head gear. Seeing the creativity expressed was so neat. :)

Christmas sleighs from candy canes and chocolate bars, and gob stoppers in a box. Every single one made looked different, and one even had a man driving it. :) Fun to see the artistic designs of these children. :)

These ornaments made using bits of crayon turned out to be a total hit. I think almost everyone made one, except for the youngest who made an ornament using pony beads stuffed inside the ornament...it looked quite nice. They were so easy to make, and the colours sometimes mixed in ways we didn't expect. Its a very neat craft to make.

After a meal of spaghetti we finished off our night making gingerbread men. It was a great afternoon and we look to be doing it again sometime. :)

Christmas traditions

12/1/2014

Every family that I know has them, do you have a Christmas tradition? Perhaps even one or two?

I grew up in a family where gift giving was kept separate from the understanding of the Christ child being born. Mind, it was always somehow connected in the minds of us children, but my parents tried to keep it somewhat separated. My hubby grew up with gifts on Christmas morning and then heading off to church. As a family we sometimes don't quite no how to make it work, but we generally always have a good time a Christmas regardless. :)

One of the things I did when I was single was to make plates of goodies for my neighbours. Doing that now is a tad difficult so we've changed it to an almost annual Open House.. we miss sometimes due to health factors and what not, but generally we Open our doors to friends, family and church folk to visit us. I put out a spread of food, clean the house really well, and will get out stuff for the children do if any come. :)

We put up a real Christmas tree every year. This year my boy helped me with quite a bit of it. That was so fun and quite nice. This year our tree came from a very local farmer. It's a big rather heavy tree, but it's smells up the house quite wonderfully and the decorations don't fall off as they have on some of our previous trees. Oh shucks, I thought I had picture it it but I don't. :) When I get one I toss it in here. In the meantime let me introduce to you one of the favourite things to do at Christmas. Put up my village. :)

I've been collecting pieces over the last 15 years. It makes me smile and my boy loves to add his own little touch. This year it was numerous lego spiders and various Harry Potter figurines. Our student made me smile. You see, he's been heavily into basketball and has been coimng home exhausted. After a nap, while I set things up, he came down stairs, saw my village and gave me the biggest grin and then had to check out my train. ) He gave everything a good going over and then said "is nice". :) I agree.. it is nice. :)

I have to admit, it's been a bit odd this year. Normally the cats take out a claim in my village but this this year they are totally ignoring it. Not sure why, but I don't mind the lack of knocked over or broken village pieces.

We also do a advent. Sometimes I buy the cheap calendars with chocolate in them, this year we went with the Lego Advent Calendar. It's not a true Advent as it's just the 24 days before Christmas. But we do readings along with it. We are alternating this year between Professor Carol's advent reading and reading Bible passages. Keeps things a bit different you know. :) We tried doing a Jesse' tree one year but found it didn't work for our family well.

So tell me please.... what are some of YOUR Christmas traditions?