Kind of blue

Christmas Eve
In the dark the streets are silent,
Tumult in the city has ceased.
In the light the snow is drifting,
But no mortal soul it greets;
Yet for some the night is weary,
Those whose hands would fashion the feast.

But for them the dark was radiant,
For their child was born that night,
He who tasted life to the utmost,
Died that we might live by his right.
You who knew the dregs of all our sorrow,
May our darkness bring us your light.
– Geoff Johnston; Picardy, Book of Praise 542

This is a kind of blue Christmas song. It dates from the seventies, but its origins are somewhat earlier. I had long been irritated by the accumulated expectations of the winter solstice, those activities we have come to call Christmas traditions. The first verse was written out of our experience as parents, years of spending the small hours of Christmas morning shuffling five piles of stocking presents on the bed, ensuring that they were all the same size, and then retiring to the kitchen to complete the preparation of the traditional Christmas breakfast, pans of outrageously rich croissants, which had to be finished and left in the refrigerator overnight.
The second verse comes from my wife Mary Lou's experience. In the seventies she was teaching in a Toronto high school which was in process of reinventing itself with an ambitious adult education program. Many of her students were single parents whose children were having a hard time growing up. They were poor and alone, and the picture-book Christmas of the magazines was far from their reality.
Many years later, in 1997, I was responsible for Christmas Sunday at Westminster, Pierrefonds, a suburb of Montreal. The text was John 1:14: “We beheld His glory, full of grace and truth.” For that occasion I rewrote the last verse:

But for them the dark was radiant,
For their child was born that night,
He who is the truth of the ages,
Come that we might walk in his light
You who vanquished all our folly,
Grant that we may live by your right.