Early Christmas Hymns

Almost everyone looks forward to the end of the year when our worship services are filled with Christmas songs. Singing about the incarnation and birth of Jesus is a long tradition in the history of the church, and nativity songs are some of our oldest existing hymns. Indeed, the angels announced the birth to the shepherds by singing about it (Luke 2:14). In addition, ideas about how Christ was both God and human filled the church's discourses for at least five centuries. No wonder that these important theological ideas would dominate the songs used in worship.

Here is a hymn by Ephrem, originally composed in Syriac in the 4^th century:

At the birth of the Son a great clamor

took place in Bethlehem, for watchers descended

to give praise there, a great thunder

were their voices. With this voice of praise

the silent ones came to give praise to the Son.

Refrain: Blessed is the Babe by whom Adam and Eve grew young again.

Here is how another hymn of Ephrem’s interprets the account of Joseph:

Joseph caressed the Son

As a babe. He served Him

As God. He rejoiced in Him

As in a blessing, and he was attentive to him

As to the Just One – a great paradox!

Refrain: Praise to you, fair Child of the Virgin.

“Who has given me the Son of the Most High

to be a son to me? I was jealous of your mother

and wanted to divorce her. I did not know

That in her womb was a great treasure

That would suddenly enrich my poverty.”

Romanos, a hymn-writer who composed in the Greek language, prepared this Nativity hymn:

Today the Virgin gives birth to the Heavenly One

And today the earth shelters the Unapproachable One,

Angels and shepherds sing His praise;

Led by the star, wise men make their way.

For unto us is born

A new born boy, from before all time God.

These translations are taken from Robert Louis Wilken’s The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity, Yale University Press, 2012.