So what has all this happiness to do with the sorrow we feel on Good Friday for the death of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior? In his Life of Christ, the Ven. Fulton J. Sheen stated quite directly that the reason Christ was born was so he could die. So, let’s ponder a few carols reflecting real Christmas joy: a blissful, never-ending life with the one, eternal God who loves us so dearly he chose to humble himself, “becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8).

Consider Of the Father’s Love Begotten, where its third verse explains the purpose for God the Son entering space and time:

He is found in human fashion; death and sorrow here to know, / That the race of Adam’s children doomed by law to endless woe, / May not henceforth die and perish, in the dreadful gulf below, / Evermore and evermore!

Speaking of royalty, We Three Kings has three verses explaining the significance of the Magi’s gifts: gold betokens Christ’s royalty, frankincense his divinity, and myrrh, one of the unguents and herbs used in burials, reminds us of the Lord’s redemptive death:

Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume

Breathes a life of gathering gloom

Sorr’wing, sighing, bleeding, dying,

Sealed in the stone-cold tomb.

Some hymnals omit these stanzas, pushing on to the carol’s final verse:

Glorious now, behold him arise.

King and God and Sacrifice!

Alleluia! Alleluia!

Sounds through the earth and skies.

While revealing the resurrection and bowing to Jesus as God incarnate, omitting the previous three stanzas then lessens the bold theological impact of the last one.

Much the same is true of What Child is This? William Chatterton Dix’s lyric, originally entitled The Manger Throne, unites Christ’s two earthly thrones: the manger and the cross. You may hear the second stanza but probably not its refrain that swells its redemptive depth:

Why lies he in such mean estate,

Where ox and ass are feeding?

Good Christians, fear, for sinners here

The silent Word is pleading.

Refrain: Nails, spear shall pierce him through,

The Cross be borne for me, for you.

Hail, hail the Word made flesh,

The Babe, the Son of Mary. 

In his manger-cradle, the nonverbal Word pleads with the Father for our salvation no less than he did on the cross. Such is the astonishing humility of the Lord.

An anonymous lullaby first seen in 1913, Come to the Manger, encapsulates why God the Son took flesh, yet ungrateful humanity chooses sin over salvation:

He leaves all his glory behind,

To be born and to die for mankind;

With grateful beasts his cradle chooses,

Thankless man his love refuses;

Lord, have pity and mercy on me!

The name of the place where Jesus was born, Bethlehem, means “house of bread.” Here the bread of angels is found in a feeding trough — an example of God’s exquisite sense of humor and perfect plan.

The Greek word eucharistia means thanksgiving. Christ’s death as one of us atones for the sins of all of us. At Mass, in the most holy Eucharist, we thank God the Father by partaking of God the Son — or do we prefer to remain among the thankless?

The First Noel is of Cornish origin. Its sixth verse explains why all humanity should show our creator the highest acclaim:

Then let us all, with one accord

Sing praises to our heavenly Lord;

That hath made heaven and earth of naught,

And with his blood, mankind hath bought. 

Here we are reminded of God’s love so “bursting to be” that, having created us out of love, he then redeems us out of love. As the ever-popular John 3:16 puts it: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”

For people celebrating this holiday alone, I offer as a Christmas prayer a verse I wrote for the carol Break Forth, O Beauteous, Heavenly Light:

And o’er the course of rolling years

The Eucharist thou left us.

Through bread and wine thou dost remain

And in thy love have kept us

O Jesu, all my joy thou art,

Blest Son of Mary never part,

Let me not be a stranger.

But make my heart thy manger.