Essays from West of 98: O Holy Night
Author’s note: this essay was originally published on Christmas week in 2019. It remains one of my most popular essays and one of my personal favorites that I have ever written. As you move through the coming Christmas holiday and into a fresh new year, I hope that the meaning of this song touches you in some way.
“O holy night! The stars are brightly shining. It’s the night of our dear Savior’s birth.”
As many of my readers know, I have complicated feelings about Christmas music, in part to the difficulties that can surround the holiday. Rather than basking in the joy of the holidays, many of our friends and neighbors simply hope to survive the season. That always weighs heavy on my heart around Christmas. As a result, I choose my Christmas music carefully. Contrary to what my wife thinks, I DO enjoy Christmas music, but it takes the right mood and the right songs. But the right ones, boy do they ever touch me.
I’ll confess something in this essay. I cannot listen to a masterful performance of “O Holy Night” without crying. I don’t mean that my eyes get a little misty around the edges. I mean that I devolve into full-on, uncontrollable weeping. “O Holy Night” is not easy to sing, but when it is done right, it is an incredible, incomparable testimony of Christ’s birth and our salvation.
Like any truly great song with divinely inspired words, the lyrics of “O Holy Night” are filled with complexity and layers. At different times in life, different parts of the song strike you in very different ways. Some popular renditions of the song have been re-arranged and don’t include all the verses, so not every version that you hear will contain this verse, but the original third verse contains something incredibly gripping:
“…His law is love and His gospel is peace,
Chains shall He break, for the slave is our brother,
And in His name all oppression shall cease…”
These lyrics hit me like a ton of bricks each time I hear or read them. The song’s background makes the lyrics even more remarkable. The original lyrics and music were written in France in 1847, amidst societal tumult. Two months later, the February Revolution would see King Louis Philippe deposed, when the working and middle classes rose up against the oppression of the French aristocracy. The song came to America eight years later. In 1855, John Sullivan Dwight, an ex-minister and music critic in Massachusetts, would translate the lyrics into English.
A French society smothered by oppression. A pre-war America only a few years from abolishing slavery. Now read those lyrics again: the slave is our brother. In His Name, all oppression shall cease. Those lyrics are not accidental or random. They’re made even more powerful by the era in which they were revealed.
Slave as brother is a Biblical truth. In Philemon 16, Paul writes that a certain slave was “more than a slave, a beloved brother, especially to me, but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.” Paul wrote this to a church leader who owned the slave in question. Not only that, but the slave had recently run away. And yet, Paul makes clear that the slave and the owner are brothers.
I praise the Lord that we no longer have physical slavery in America, but many of our brothers and sisters are weighed down by the chains of addiction, poverty, despair, hopelessness, and more. It was surely jolting for Philemon to see his slave called his brother. It should equally jolt to recognize that our brothers and sisters are even those who aren’t popular, who live in the “icky” parts of society, and who are struggling deeply.
As we move through the Christmas season, I encourage each of us to consider the lyrics of “O Holy Night.” Are we treating the slave as our brother? Are we working to see that all oppression shall cease, in Jesus’ holy name? Merry Christmas! Our savior is born.
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and podcast. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to West of 98 wherever podcasts are found.