Can you hear it? Like you, I’ve been surrounded with Christmas music since Thanksgiving. My SiriusXM Christian music channel – The Message – has been playing “only Christmas music” since December premiered. For the last month, I’ve heard from Bing Crosby more than I’ve heard from my family. For the next 10 days, we’re living in Opportunity Central.

Right now, I have my favorite Christmas tune playing. I’ve hit “repeat” innumerable times since the turkey hit the table at the last Big Family Holiday. Bet you couldn’t guess the artist and title!

One of the reasons I embrace Christmas tightly is because – for about four weeks – most of the people around us act like they agree with us. During July, you can be marginalized if you go public with your thoughts about Jesus, but during December, even lost people will agree, and they’re mostly smiling.

The song in my background proves my point. James Taylor had recorded 20 albums before he put his first Christmas album on the shelves in 2004. His playlist on that collection includes some pretty bland mall music – Santa Claus is Coming to Town, Jingle Bells, Deck the Halls, that kind of culturally-friendly stuff – but he sandwiches those utterly useless holiday hoots with some numbers that pack a biblical punch.

Few modern Christmas albums include the hymn that was made from the poem written by Christina G. Rossetti in England, nearly 150 years ago. Read what James is singing to me, as I write:

In the bleak midwinter, icy wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Snow on snow had fallen, snow on snow, on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long and long ago.

Angels and archangels, they have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim rising in the air;

Oh, but only Mary, in her maiden bliss,

Worshipped the beloved with a mother’s kiss.

Heaven cannot hold Him, nor can earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall fall away when He comes to reign.

What then can I give Him, empty as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man, I would know my part;

What then can I give Him? I must give my heart.

Back in the day, I shared the Christmas story with thousands of people assembled at church for their year-end check-in, but I’ve never captured the essence of the message as well as Christina wrote it, and James sings it. It’s so great that it’s tragic.

Tragic? 

For the next ten days, millions of people will be immersed in the facts of the Advent, and some of the music will make it memorable… but they’ve never acted on Taylor’s last verse. 

With the gaggle of gifts that will trade hands in the next two weeks, the gift that would top ’em all is the gift of your heart, given to the One who was – and remains – the gift from the Heavenly Father. He was sent to resolve our emptiness with the fulness that can only come with the promised presence of the grown-up Christ Child, who awaits His Second Advent, when “heaven and earth shall fall away, when He comes to reign…”

Merry Christmas, dear friend. You’ll be busy next Monday getting ready, but I’ll have something to share before you go dark for the Main Event. Don’t let the music tell only His story: make it your story, as well!

Bob Shank

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