A funeral for a Baroness

Wednesday was the funeral for Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013), Britain’s second greatest prime minister of the 20th Century (after Churchill), who in her three consecutive terms transformed the British economy and society.

The service for Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven was held at St. Paul’s Cathedral, which lacks the official history of Westminster Abbey but makes up for it with architectural grandeur and scope (having been for centuries Britain’s tallest building). I couldn’t watch live, but it was covered by her old ally the Telegraph and her nemesis the Guardian (among others).

Since her death, I’ve been reading a wonderful biography by American Claire Berlinski, entitled There is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters. It credits her Methodist upbringing (and the influence of her father) for her great political success.

I don’t know much about English Methodists — other than the Wesley family and their hymns — but the order of service posted at the Telegraph and the St. Paul’s website seems very Church of England to me. The words to the hymns were very familiar to my ECUSA-raised upbringing (although the tunes were not).

The headline on the Telegraph service commentary termed it “a miraculous pairing of words and music.” As Christopher Howse wrote:

From the moment her coffin was met at St Clement Danes with the words, “We who are baptised in the death of Christ,” the topic was something universal: death. This was not divisive but, in the words of the Bishop of London, “the common destiny of all human beings”. It was, yesterday, as if the millions watching were following a stage tragedy. The difference was that this was a true story, and the tragic flaw of the heroine was not a moral failing but mortality itself.

The Church of England service emphasised two things: the reality of death, with no demurring, and the hope of resurrection. “The days of man are but grass,” read Prebendary Rose Hudson-Wilkin. “For as soon as the wind goeth over it, it is gone.” Left at that, it would be no more than Hadrian’s sad farewell to the soul: “Animula, vagula, blandula.” But it was not left at that. From deep, dim waters it strove upwards towards the light.

“Let not your heart be troubled,” the Prime Minister read from the Gospel of St John. “I go to prepare a place for you.” Those were words of Jesus, and, in the passage read, Thomas usefully responded, “Lord, we know not whither thou goest.” Nothing could rub in more sorely that we cannot see beyond the dark and narrow gates of death.

The text was from the Authorized Version (King James for us Yankees), including the Lord’s Prayer and a reading by her granddaughter of Ephesians 6: 10-18.

The opening sentences sung by the choir include these three (or at least two) very familiar passages, to a setting by William Croft:

I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.
John 11. 25, 26

I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.
Job 19. 25-27

We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord.
1 Timothy 6. 7 and Job 1. 21

Other music included “How lovely is thy dwelling place,” an adaptation of Psalm 84 that’s one of my favorite songs from Brahms’s German Requiem.

The first congregation hymn was “He who would valiant be,” adapted by Dearmer and Vaughan Williams for The English Hymnal from text by John Bunyan (the great Puritan author) and an English folk tune. From The Cyberhymnal description, it seems an odd hymn to put in a CoE hymnal:

Words: John Bun­yan, Pil­grim’s Prog­ress, 1684; mo­di­fied by Per­cy Dear­mer in The Eng­lish Hym­nal (Lon­don: Ox­ford Un­i­ver­si­ty Press, 1906). Bun­yan wrote these words dur­ing his 12-year pri­son sent­ence for re­fus­ing to con­form to the of­fi­cial state church.

The “official state church” in this case was the 150-year-old CoE, which was too Anglo-Catholic for the Puritans and many others of the severe (or seriously) reformed faith. So this hymn in a 20th century Anglican hymnal celebrates defiance of the 17th century Anglican church.

Lady Thatcher’s funeral used the TEH version (#402) with the tune to Monks Gate, while H40 (#563) lists St. Dunstan’s and H82 (in a rare improvement) includes both tunes (#565 and #564 respectively), albeit without harmony for the former.

In a similar vein, the final congregation hymn was “Love Divine” by Charles Wesley. Raised on H40, the version to Hyfrydol (H40: #479) had very strong resonance with me, even before Mrs. Nine and I sang it at our wedding.

However, apparently that’s not the tune used by the CoE. TEH (#437) lists Moriah, while Songs of Praise, Enlarged Edition (#573) has the Welsh Moriah and the English Exile. Among CoE hymnals, only in the New English Hymnal (#408) do we see Blaenwern, the 1905 tune by William Rowlands used at Lady Thatcher’s funeral.

Other than the 1905 date, I haven’t found much about Blaenwern, perhaps because I only have a limited collection of books on English hymns. Ian Bradley lists five tunes, including three no longer used: the Purcell tune Westminster that Wesley favored, Love Divine by John Stainer (in the 1889 Hymns A&M and NEH), and Airedale by Charles Stanford. Bradley continues

Nowadays the hymn is generally sung to one of two equally majestic Welsh tunes: Hyfrydol by Rowland Huw Pritchard (1811-57), a loomtender’s assistant in the Weslh Flannel Manufacturing Company’s mills at Holywell; and Balenwern by William Penfro Rowlands (1860-1937).

One last note on Blaenwern: it’s the tune used with these lyrics at the wedding of the Queen’s grandson to Kate Middleton held two years earlier — and two miles away — at Westminster Abbey.

The service concluded with the Nunc Dimittis (in English) from Stanford’s Evening Service in G. Again, the words are very familiar but the tune is not; H40 has seven settings of the Nunc Dimittis, but none match the Stanford setting. By the end of the service, I would have would have heard many familiar texts, but (except for Brahms) not to the expected melodies.

Interestingly, the only overlap between Lady Thatcher’s service and the 2007 service for (Episcopalian) Gerald Ford is the Brahams — “How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place” (in English) from the German Requiem.

I won’t be having a state funeral, but perhaps my friends and family will host one at my local parish church many decades hence. I feel I can’t go wrong with these examples: the Brahms and “Love divine” would top my requests for my own funeral (assuming our local choir can handle it). My third request would be “The Lord is my Shepherd” (Psalm 23) from Rutter’s Requiem; we did the psalm for my dad’s funeral, but the choir at his church wasn’t up for the Rutter setting on such short notice. In general, I’m not a big Rutter fan, but this piece is the most haunting setting I’ve ever heard of this text.

Saving the next generation of Anglo-Catholics

Today we attended the closing service for the annual youth retreat of the San Diego Anglicans. Nearly 50 teens from the San Diego ACNA parishes were in attendance, as were their parents, other supportive parishioners and of course the retreat leaders.

Abdicating our Anglo-Catholic Leadership

Watching the contemporary, evangelical Anglican service made me realize how much we Anglo-Catholics have abdicated our responsibility to train the next generation of faithful Christians. If we don’t expose the young generation to the beauty of a thousand years of liturgy — or acquiesce to the myth that young people are only interested in contemporary worship — the traditional liturgy will be lost, at best to be rediscovered a century or two hence.

The arguments for contemporary worship seem to be associated with the evangelical wing of the Anglican tradition, whether among theological liberals or traditionalists. Their ongoing desire to be “relevant” supplants hymns (and organs and four-part chorales) with CCM.

What’s wrong with praise music? Why should we try to preserve traditional hymnody?

While I personally object to the guitars and pop melodies of contemporary worship, I realize this is a "classical" vs. "pop" music argument that is unlikely to be won any time soon. For my generation, training in music meant training in the classical Western tradition, renaissance to romantic with a little 20th century thrown in for good measure. However, since that time, the whole pop-infused culture (and the decline of musical education more generally) means that classical radio stations and record label are dying while every big city has a dozen or more pop stations.

Instead, today’s service highlighted two more fundamental problems of the contemporary, praise music-oriented liturgy that seems to be dominant in the ACNA and AMiA (as with the ECUSA that these parishes fled).

Ahistoricity

The first problem is the ahistoric hubris of praise music. While the hymnals of 1860, 1906, 1940 or 1982 include new hymns (sometimes from the hymnal editors), they also retained the best hymns from four or five centuries of Christian liturgical worship.

Today, the praise music leader makes the assumption that worship music began in 1960 (or 1970 or 2000) and nothing older than that is relevant for our pop-infused culture or Christians.

With one exception, I didn’t know any of the songs from this afternoon’s service. However, by noting key phrases from three praise songs, I was able to look them up later

• Cannons (“It’s falling from the clouds…”, 2007)
• From the Inside Out (“A thousand times I've failed…”, 2006) and
• How Great is Our God (“How great is our God, sing with me,” 2004).

There were no hymns, not even from the 60s — so if these were representative of the whole service, then the leaders assumed that teen-suitable music was composed before 2001.

This is hardly the only Anglican service to take this approach. (Intentionally) I haven’t been to a lot of praise music services, but this seems typical of the ones I’ve seen.

Who authorized these worship leaders to throw out Christian worship and start over again? Is this something that the church should do every century, generation or (in this case) every decade? What about linking believers to the message, historic role or linkage of the faithful through the ages? If you reset the canon of hymnody every decade, how will parents ever share the same musical heritage as their children?

In the end, this is the fault of the clergy who either exercise, delegate or abdicate their authority over the content of liturgy. Will we also throw away scripture, theological essays, creeds, or prayers when they’re more than a decade old? That’s the way of the TEC, not a denomination that claims to be theologically orthodox and anchored in Anglican tradition.

Shallow Roots

The second problem of today’s service was the utter vapidity of the lyrics. Rather than being anchored in scripture — direct quotations or paraphrases — the emphasis is on the emotive.

Let’s take Cannons by Phil Wickham:

It's falling from the clouds
A strange and lovely sound
I hear it in the thunder and rain
It's ringing in the skies
Like cannons in the night
The music of the universe plays

You are holy great and mighty
The moon and the stars declare who You are
I'm so unworthy, but still You love me
Forever my heart will sing of how great You are

Beautiful and free
Song of Galaxies
It's reaching far beyond the milky way
Lets join in with the sound
C'mon let's sing it loud
As the music of the universe plays

Contrast this to the great Anglican hymnodist Isaac Watts, e.g. Hymn #289 in Hymnal 1940, composed nearly 300 years ago:

O God, our help in ages past,
our hope for years to come,
our shelter from the stormy blast,
and our eternal home:

Under the shadow of thy throne,
thy saints have dwelt secure;
sufficient is thine arm alone,
and our defense is sure.

Before the hills in order stood,
or earth received her frame,
from everlasting thou art God,
to endless years the same.

A thousand ages in thy sight
are like an evening gone;
short as the watch that ends the night
before the rising sun.

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
bears all its sons away;
they fly, forgotten, as a dream
dies at the opening day.

As usual, the praise song is about me, me and me, while Watts and is writing about God.

Relevance and evangelicalism does not have to mean shallow. Consider Charles Wesley, the prolific hymnodist and leader of the Methodist revival in (and eventual schism from) from the Church of England and Hymn #479 in my favorite hymnal:

Love divine, all loves excelling,
joy of heaven, to earth come down,
fix in us thy humble dwelling,
all thy faithful mercies crown.
Jesus, thou art all compassion,
pure, unbounded love thou art;
visit us with thy salvation,
enter every trembling heart.

Come, almighty to deliver,
let us all thy life receive;
suddenly return, and never,
nevermore thy temples leave.
Thee we would be always blessing,
serve thee as thy hosts above,
pray, and praise thee without ceasing,
glory in thy perfect love.

Finish then thy new creation;
pure and spotless let us be;
let us see thy great salvation
perfectly restored in thee:
changed from glory into glory,
till in heaven we take our place,
till we cast our crowns before thee,
lost in wonder, love, and praise.

The shallow, emotive nature of most CCM calls to mind the parable of the sower (Matthew 13, Mark 4, Luke 8). The gospel of Luke is particularly relevant:

5 “A sower went out to sow his seed. And as he sowed, some fell along the path and was trampled underfoot, and the birds of the air devoured it.
6 And some fell on the rock, and as it grew up, it withered away, because it had no moisture.
7 And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up with it and choked it.
8 And some fell into good soil and grew and yielded a hundredfold.”
…
9 And when his disciples asked him what this parable meant,
10 [Jesus] said, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but for others they are in parables, so that ‘seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not understand.’
…
13. And the ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe for a while, and in time of testing fall away.

The evangelical preacher and parishioner can bring great enthusiasm to their faith, but (as in the gospel parable), what happens when the enthusiasm fades? As my daughter could have explained in elementary school, sugar provides a short-term energy rush, but the human body needs a more balanced diet (with protein) to build muscle and long-term endurance.

After the service, I approached a young (college graduate) member of our parish who, as it turns out, felt as I did about the CCM emphasis on emotion over belief. This evening, he e-mailed me this quote from Seraphim Rose, a San Diego-born Orthodox monk:

“A person must be in the religious search not for the sake of religious experiences, which can deceive, but for the sake of truth."

The risk of inculcating our children with a shallow faith is creating shallow Christians who will wither away in the face of our relentlessly secular culture. If we are trying to preserve the faith for all generations, we should inculcate a deeper and more durable faith — one more anchored in the proven faith and tradition across the millenia.

What Can We Do?

The role of the Anglo-Catholic parishes, clergy, laity and musicians should not merely be to serve the graying 28 Prayer Book/Rite I refugees, but to raise a new generation of Anglican believers in North America. We should not abdicate this responsibility to our evangelical brethren, but continue articulate and stand for our principles in preserving the historic faith.

The uneasy alliance that is the ACNA should be willing to embrace such an option: in theory, the denomination should be willing to support a diversified approach to continuing the faith that has existed for centuries. However, the ACNA’s recent liturgical efforts (as the emphasis on contemporary worship at most ACNA parishes) suggests that this is unlikely to happen. Anglo-Catholicism still has its proponents — at Nashotah, PB USA, FiF and the Schism I parishes — but they’re not running the ACNA.

We still have the attention of the praise band children who sing Watts and Wesley on Sunday morning, if not the rest of the year. Perhaps a few grandparents (or parents) can put their foot down to make sure the next generation hear the full canon of Christian of Christian music, rather than just a shallow slice of the past decade.

ACNA needs repentance even more than TEC

Note update based on October 2013 revised ACNA liturgy.

For Lent 2, the RCL reading was Luke 13:1-9, where Jesus says “unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” and then tells the parable of the fig tree. Our pastor used it to preach a blunt sermon about repentance.

Unfortunately, this was the Sunday he decided to use the “Contemporized Version: Trail Edition December 2012” of the new ACNA liturgy. I’ll save the arguments about the overall pros and cons for another time.

What was stunning — stunningly awful — was how we responded to his altar call for repentance in this new (“trial use”) corporate worship.

The Confession and Absolution of Sins
Celebrant: We pray to you also for the forgiveness of sins.
Celebrant and People:Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father;
in your compassion forgive us our sins,
known and unknown, things done and left and undone;
and so uphold us by your Spirit
that we ay live and serve you in newness of life,
to the honor and glory of your Name;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

I was not the only person to point out to our pastor that this was a notably brief and thin confession. (Even his wife said so). But, more importantly, if you look closely, it’s not a confession at all. It’s like a little boy who says “please forgive me” without first saying that “I was wrong.”

Compare this to the 1662 BCP:

Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men;
We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness,
Which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed,
By thought, word, and deed, Against thy Divine Majesty,
Provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation againſt us.
We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings;
The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable.
Have mercy upon us, Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father;
For thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, forgive us all that is past;
And grant that we may ever hereafter serve and please thee in newness of life,
To the honor and glory of thy Name; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The words are the same as I recited since childhood from the 1928 (US) Book of Common Prayer, and was also preserved in Rite I (at least as the approved variant) in Rite I of the 1979 prayer book. (Except for the “Amen” and medieval spelling, the same words are also found in Cranmer’s 1549 BCP).

Most surprisingly, the proposed ACNA liturgy is even less substantial than the watered down Rite II (Confession Lite) in the 1979 prayer book:

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,
have mercy on us and forgive us;
that we may delight in your will,
and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your Name. Amen.

At least the Rite II worshipers say “we confesses that we have sinned against you in thought, word and deed,” unlike what the ACNA liturgists are proposing we say.

In the Church of England’s 2000 book of alternative services, Common Worship, there are four different communion services. Order One resembles our US Rite II, whether in contemporary wording (p. 169) or traditional (p. 209). Order Two (traditional, p. 237) parallels the 1662 BCP, while the contemporary (p. 257) shows that Cranmer’s confession can be expressed in 21st century language:

Almighty God,
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
maker of all things, judge of all people,
we acknowledge and lament our many sins
and the wickedness we have committed time after time, by thought, word and deed against your divine majesty. We have provoked your righteous anger
and your indignation against us.
We earnestly repent,
and are deeply sorry for these our wrongdoings;
the memory of them weighs us down,
the burden of them is too great for us to bear.
Have mercy upon us,
have mercy upon us, most merciful Father.
For your Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake,
forgive us all that is past;
and grant that from this time forward
we may always serve and please you in newness of life, to the honor and glory of your name; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

This is essentially the same language (I haven’t compared it word for word) that Peter Toon and the Prayer Book Society used in An Anglican Prayer Book, their 2008 update of the 1662 BCP for AMiA.

As Toon noted, the trends has been away from a Book of Common Prayer to a series of books of alternative services, with local option to choose among the many variants. As such, a thin gruel for confession seems inevitable for ACNA: but there’s no reason it should be less than our TEC brethren — or that it should drop the centuries-old theology as expressed in contemporary language.

Ever since I came back to the church in my 30s, the confession has been the most powerful moment of the service, when we “acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness.” It was only later, as I studied Lutheran and Reformed theology, that I realized that this personal confession of sinfulness was (at least for some traditions) the essence of the Protestant faith.

I know that mega-church pastors don’t want to use the “s” word. But ACNA, even its evangelical wing? It’s time for the ACNA Liturgy Task Force to repent of its efforts to water down the millennia-old worship and theology that is part of our shared Christian heritage.

Update: The Texts for Common Prayer (released October 2013) correct this problem with a more theologically sound confession and even the “s” word:

The Deacon or other person appointed says the following
All who truly and earnestly repent of your sins, and seek to be reconciled with your neighbors, and intend to lead the new life, following the commandments of God, and walking in his holy ways: draw near with faith and make your humble confession to Almighty God.

Silence

The Deacon and People kneel as able and pray
Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
maker and judge of us all:
We acknowledge and repent of our many sins and offenses, which we have committed by thought, word, and deed,
against your divine majesty,
provoking most justly your righteous anger against us.
We are deeply sorry for these transgressions.
The burden of them is more than we can bear.
Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father;
for your Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake,
forgive us all that is past;
and grant that we may evermore serve and please you in newness of to the honor and glory of your Name;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This correction renders moot (makes obsolete) the earlier criticisms of the draft ACNA liturgy.

Ancient Penitence

For the first time in many years, I began Ash Wednesday with a service and the imposition of ashes. (In previous years, the only service I could attend was at night but this year it was the other way 'round).

One advantage of doing it early is that it makes fasting until service pretty easy. (Just to avoid this loophole, I had bread for lunch and held off on a real meal until dinner). Another (dis)advantage is facing the world with a smudge on my forehead.

To prepare for any conversations, I tried to do a little research on the practice. In my Oxford History of Christian Worship, it mentions Ash Wednesday only twice. In one, it speculates that a penitential Lent began in the late 4th century and the 46 days (pushing it back to Wednesday) was common “before the late fifth century.” (P. 118) It also mentions Ash Wednesday as a time of penitence, established by the late 4th century in the Gelasian Sacramentary. This oldest extant Roman missal mentions scheduling Ash Wednesday (p. lxxiv in the 1894 English edition) but not ashes.

Fortunately, I was also watching my favorite podcast, Issues Etc., and their Monday show included a discussion of the topic. The third segment was entitled “Does the Season of Lent Have Pagan Origins?” and was a 25 minute interview with Pastor Joseph Abrahamson of Clearwater Lutheran Parish, a group of LCMS churches in Minnesota. (Highly recommended for anyone contemplating the meaning of Lent).

The gist of the interview was to summarize his research for the article “Redeeming Holy Days from Pagan Lies — Ash Wednesday and Lent,” published earlier this month online on the Steadfast Lutherans website. Pastor Abrahamson had much better information than the learned scholars from my liturgical library.

Here’s the money quote:

St. Athanasius, who led at the Council of Nicea to defeat Arianism—a denial of Christ being truly God and man in one person—was a bishop in Alexandria, Egypt. He wrote annual Festival letters to the Church as they prepared to celebrate Easter. In the year 331 he wrote in order to encourage his congregations in Egypt to keep the Lenten fast for 40 days. Athanasius directs the readers to many Scriptural examples and exhortations to moderation, self-control, and fasting for repentance, Athanasius gives several Bible examples of the 40 day fast, especially of Christ’s 40 day fast...

He continues

That this was practiced in Rome and elsewhere is seen in St. Athanasius’ letter from the year 340 A.D. when he returns from a meeting of pastors/bishops from all around the world, and he encourages his own congregations to continue in the same practice of the 40 day Lenten fast as does “the rest of the whole world.”

So for my Christian (particularly low church) friends, I’d say that Lent was practices at least as early as 331, as old as the Council of Nicaea (325) and older than the final Nicene Creed itself (381). For my non-Christian (or unknown) friends, I’d give a simple punchy statement: “Ash Wednesday was already the norm by 340 A.D.”

Abrahamson is not very helpful on the ash question itself: the name is known, but the imposition of ashes is not explicitly mentioned. He recites various examples of why ashes were a common form of penitence in the Old Testament, but no smoking gun.

Thus armed, I walked out to a variety of meetings at work today, dreading the awkwardness but reminding myself that we need to live our beliefs (and not leave our light under a basket). Among my coworkers, one Christian said she wished she could go to service today but probably couldn’t; another talked about his dilemma as a moderate Presbyterian as the PCUSA splits into its traditionalist and loony left contingents. Several others recognized the significance but didn’t otherwise comment. Only two people said “you have something on your forehead,” one of whom was corrected by another person in the same meeting: “It’s Ash Wednesday.”

Perhaps the most interesting discussion was with a Jewish woman in her 30s who (to the later distress of her mother) had ashes imposed in her parochial school kindergarten: it’s her oldest religious memory. We talked briefly about penitence: it was a rare chance at work to highlight Judeo-Christian commonalities in an increasingly secular culture.

We (Jew, Christian, Muslim, atheist) are all imperfect, sinful beings following down the millennia-old path of our spirtual forebears, Adam and Eve. As the priest quoted Genesis this morning as he imposed the ashes: “you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Let us be merry, our saviour is borne

Writing on the Catholic blog First Things, Matthew Schmitz remarks on why in English we say Merry (and not Happy) Christmas:

Christmas is conspicuously the only time of year when the word “merry” receives heavy use. The greeting “Merry Christmas” dates back to at least 1565, in which year the author of the Hereford Municipal Manuscript wrote “And thus I comytt you to god, who send you a merry Christmas & many.” Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, published in 1843, pushed it forward, as did industrialization: The first commercially sold Christmas card (also printed in 1843) contained the salutation “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You.”
…

Queen Elizabeth, a woman of serious low-church piety, is said to prefer “happy” to “merry” because she dislikes “merry’s” connotation of boisterousness, even slight intoxication. …

This moral suspicion of “Merry Christmas” dates back to the Methodist churchmen of the Victorian era who sought to promote sobriety among the English working class. Merrymaking of the ancient, alcoholic sort was frowned on year-round, perhaps never more so than during the celebration of the Savior’s birth. …

We may no longer associate “merry” with spirits alcoholic as well as high, but the meaning was once familiar. “Merry” appeared in both the Wyclife and King James bibles in reference to intoxication, where it describes an evening in the life of the rich man Nabal: “He held a feast in his house, like the feast of a king; and Nabal’s heart was merry within him, for he was very drunken.” (To wish someone a holiday feast like Nabal’s was to wish him a very good Christmas indeed.)

This of course brings us back to the central tension ever since the creation of the Church of England — between the Reformed (low church, Puritan, Methodist) and Anglo-Catholic (high church, Oxford Movement, Catholic without the Pope) branches of the CoE and Anglicanism.

Meanwhile, the meaning of “Merry” brought to mind the refrain of an English folk carol

A Virgin unspotted the Prophet foretold,
Should bring forth a Saviour which now we behold,
To be our Redeemer from Death, Hell and Sin,
Which Adam's transgression involved us in.

Then let us be merry,
Cast sorrow away.
Our Saviour Christ Jesus
Is born on this day.

The words officially date to a 1750 text, and although there are many tunes, the one I know is Judea by William Billings (1746-1800).

Wikisource calls it “an English Marian folk carol of medieval origin.” Although not the most reliable of sources, the text is undeniably Mary-centric and with Billing’s tune has an Elizabethan (i.e. 16th century) feel to it.

So if savouring the news of our Saviour is catholic, high church or Marian, I’m all for it.

Merry Christmas!