snow on snow on snow
“In the bleak midwinter frosty wind made moan,
earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone:
snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
in the bleak midwinter, long ago.”
This is the opening stanza of the beautiful Christmas hymn credited to Christina Rossetti. We once had a pastor who hated this hymn, and so for years it was not included in the selection of songs sung in our worship services. I’m not sure where his animus came from, whether it was just too depressing for him, or whether he was of the conviction that the first Christmas didn’t really happen in the winter. And since it occurred in Palestine there probably wouldn’t have been snow or ice either.
However, I’ve begun to wonder if Rossetti’s poem set to music was really more metaphorical than that. Christ’s birth came at a period in Judeo-Christian history that was preceded by the “Intertestamental Period”, a span of time of about 400 years between the last of the Old Testament prophets and the arrival of Jesus Christ. It was a time when the nation of Israel waited for their Messiah to come. I can use my imagination to sense how bleak that must have felt. Many among us are having trouble just waiting through four years of a Trump presidency. How hopeless did it feel to watch generation after generation die out with complete silence from the Lord God Almighty? How hard to keep the faith! Perhaps that is how you feel today.
The people watched and waited, perhaps understanding the imagery of water hard as stone from the words of that great dramatic lament, the book of Job, where the question is posed, “From whose womb comes the ice? Who gives birth to the frost from the heavens when the waters become hard as stone, and when the surface of the deep is frozen.” Job 38:29-30
Yet, when an angel came to an insignificant young girl in an insignificant village and told her that she would bear a son, without benefit of a husband, she submitted with some of the most beautiful words of Scripture: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant…he has mercy on those who fear him in every generation. He has shown the strength of his arm, he has scattered the proud in their conceit….” Luke 1:46-55
Where did she get such courage and faith? Enough faith to carry her through potential abandonment and disgrace, an arduous journey, displacement and meager hospitality in a stable. Rossetti writes in the fourth stanza of her poem:
“Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
cherubim and seraphim thronged the air,
but only his mother, in her maiden bliss,
worshiped the Beloved with a kiss.”
This was a lonely vigil indeed, even with the supernatural arrival of angels and shepherds. For the angels left, and the shepherds went back to their fields. Mary and Joseph had to flee for their lives. The bleak midwinter of history continued for them in Egypt as they heard of the deaths of all the infant and toddler children of their homeland.
Christina Rossetti makes the response of Mary personal to us as well in her final stanza:
“What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb,
if I were a wise man I would do my part,
yet what I can I give him, give my heart.”
How can you not love a song like this so connected to the breadth of human experience? God appears in our bleakest times and spurs a response of total love and self-donation. May he do so for each of us today.
Love, Liz
