What a creative setting for a Christmas hymn!
Requested by Lydia–See Amid the Winter’s Snow, performed, in a real snow-scape, by the kids at Fountainview Academy.
Tag: Christmas 2019
A Clip from ‘Scrooge’ (1951)
Patty and I got all misty-eyed, as we do every Christmas, watching the Alistair Sim classic, Scrooge (aka A Christmas Carol), this afternoon. What a pair of softies! I mean, what’s the big deal? It’s only redemption!
Here’s young Scrooge at Mr. Fezziwig’s Christmas party, with one of the classic folk dances of England and Scotland–“Sir Roger de Coverley.” Published back in 1695, this dance turns up in several 19th century novels.
Have any of you out there ever danced it?
Anyway, out of all the fine movie versions of A Christmas Carol, this one is our favorite. Hankie, please!
By Request, ‘The Holly and the Ivy’
Requested by Jeremy: Here’s another old familiar Christmas carol sung by a melody I’ve never heard before–The Holly and the Ivy, sung by the Norwich Cathedral Choir.
By the way, the carol contest is still on and the leading carol is still on top with 44 views on the day it was posted. Can you beat that?
Are You Loving This Christmas?
Well, gee, I hope you all are loving it, ’cause I sure am!
Maybe it’s posting all the Christmas hymns and carols that makes it come alive for me. Maybe it’s all the Christmases I’ve known, renewing their acquaintance.
So are you loving this Christmas of 2019?
True: I miss the people whom I used to share it with. On around the age of 50, you start losing people. When you’re 20 it never occurs to you. But love ’em now, because you won’t have them forever. Not until we all get to Heaven.
But even that sense of loss is a reminder of that glorious restitution that the Lord Our God has promised us. The first down payment on that promise was the birth of God’s own Son, Jesus Christ Our Lord. We who believe in Him shall not die, but have everlasting life: it was for “the selfsame thing” that God created us in the first place (2 Corinthians 5:5).
So God has said.
‘Mary, Did You Know?’
I’ve never heard this carol sung so beautifully as this–Mary, Did You Know?, performed by the students at Fountainview Academy. They even managed to stage it in a stable.
‘It Came Upon a Midnight Clear’ (English Melody)
I didn’t know there was another melody that goes with the lyrics of It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, so I got quite a surprise when I heard this–by Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band. Lovely melody! Given its finished form by Arthur Sullivan, of Gilbert & Sullivan fame. The melody we’re used to in America is about 30 years older, published in 1850.
I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.
‘O Holy Night’ in Swedish
My friend “Count Wedgemore” posted this on my chess page a few days ago–O halga natt (O Holy Night), sung by the great Swedish tenor, Jussi Bjorling, in 1959. Wait’ll you hear his voice!
Years later, Luciano Pavarotti was asked to compare himself to Bjorling. He declined. “I’m only human,” he said.
By Request, ‘The First Noel’
Phoebe requested this, The First Noel, so I picked this rendition by the King’s College Choir, at Cambridge.
As for the carol contest, the leading carol has 44 views; that was 12 days ago, and no one’s come close since.
Only four days left till Christmas!
By Request, ‘Christmas Means Heaven to Me’
I’ve gone as far as I can go today toward catching up on your Christmas hymn requests. But tomorrow we’ll have more!
Requested by Erlene–Christmas Means Heaven to Me, by Carroll Roberson.
By Request, ‘Unto Us a Child is Born’
Requested by Joshua, For Unto Us a Child is Born, sung a capella by GLAD. The Bible verse is Isaiah 9:6, the music from Handel’s Messiah.
If the world ever needed Christmas, it needs it now.