As we begin the final week of Advent, we turn our attention to the theme of Love. With Christmas day looming large this week, we’d like to examine this theme through a more traditional piece of Christmas media, “O Holy Night.”
Long before it became a staple of Christmas Eve services and masses (alongside “Silent Night”), “O Holy Night” began as a French poem in 1847. In 1855, as the United States continued to become more and more divided over the topic of slavery, it was adapted into the song we know by staunch American abolitionist John Sullivan Dwight.
This historical and cultural context adds a powerful layer of meaning to the song’s third and final verse, which says:
Truly He taught us to love one another;
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
Sweet hymns of joy in grateful chorus raise we
Let all within us Praise His Holy name
Christ is the Lord; O praise His name forever!
His power and glory evermore proclaim!”
This idea of treating the slave as our brother is far from new. Paul’s letter to Philemon is primarily a plea for Onesimus, a runaway slave who Paul calls “a beloved brother.”
While many have discussed it, it’s difficult to really understand how radical an idea this was for Paul’s time. Two millennia separated from Paul originally writing to Philemon, we’ve come to better understand the dehumanizing and sinful nature of slavery, but during Paul’s time, it was an accepted part of Roman culture. Still, Paul knew that the arrival of Jesus signaled the coming of a radical and revolutionary love—a love that breaks chains and upends accepted societal sins.
“O Holy Night” is a reminder of this transformative love. The song declares that “His law is love,” an idea mirrored by both Jesus’ summation of the entire law, but also in some of His final words to His disciples, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
As you celebrate the birth of Jesus this year and every year, remember that His arrival means the beginning to the end of the reign of hate and prejudice on the earth. Love itself—Love Himself—had arrived in quiet splendor, born into a humble manger, in an overcrowded town, on a very holy night.
Here’s a question you could use to kickstart—or continue—a conversation: What’s one way someone has shown you love this month? What’s one way you have shown someone else love?