Christmas carols! We hear the tunes and our minds conjure up visions of decorated trees, family gatherings, piles of presents. We recall the eager anticipation of Christmas Day we experienced as children, and try to help the children around us to feel the same.

So carols serve to tie generations together. Many of the songs we’ll sing on Sundays this month were sung in my childhood church fifty years ago; were sung in my mother’s childhood church eighty years ago; were sung in her mother’s church 120 years ago; and on back through the decades and centuries. Music and lyrics bind Christians together across time.

Scripture tells us Christians of every time, from every place, of every culture form one Body – we are members one of another. Music reminds us of that truth.

Thus, we aim at DGCC to include music and lyrics both old and new – and we include the year the lyrics were written in the bulletin. These dates remind us: we are part of that One Church that the Spirit is building and perfecting, from every tribe and tongue and nation, from every decade and century and millennium.

So praise God for familiar carols that have been sung regularly for centuries!

But our unity with believers from earlier eras can also prompt us to discover carols that have dropped out of modern hymnals, that are almost never sung today. By digging into the past, we delight that much more in our common worship with brothers and sisters from earlier eras.

Here is a carol you probably have never heard sung: Shepherds Rejoice, by one of the earliest English hymn writers, Isaac Watts. I came across these three-hundred-year-old lyrics in the late 90s, and then was delighted to find that a tune commonly used for this carol right after the American Revolution was composed by William Billings, perhaps the greatest early American composer.

The lyrics are below. You can listen to the first and last stanzas sung to Billings’ tune via this link.

The first two stanzas are spoken by the angel to the shepherds, proclaiming the coming of the King of kings – but this king sits on a humble throne. So the angel invites these humble shepherds to kiss the Son (echoing Psalm 2:12).

The whole company of angels then gives glory to God in the third stanza.

In the fourth stanza, Isaac Watts addresses us: Angels are praising God in song – shouldn’t we men do the same? He then writes one of the greatest lines in all hymnody:

O may we lose these useless tongues
When they forget to praise!

God created us for His glory. He gave us tongues so that we might praise and glorify Him – including in speech, in song, in counsel, and in comfort.

So do so this season! Join Christians across the centuries by praising Him with old carols! And express our culture’s different forms of praise by singing new carols! And then also: praise Him through this new old carol from centuries past, that reminds us why we have tongues.

‘Shepherds, rejoice! lift up your eyes
And send your fears away;
News from the region of the skies:
Salvation’s born today!
Jesus, the God whom angels fear,
Comes down to dwell with you;
Today he makes his entrance here,
But not as monarchs do.

‘No gold, nor purple swaddling bands,
Nor royal shining things;
A manger for his cradle stands,
And holds the King of kings.
Go, shepherds, where the Infant lies,
And see his humble throne;
With tears of joy in all your eyes,
Go, shepherds, kiss the Son.’

Thus Gabriel sang, and straight around
The heavenly armies throng;
They tune their harps to lofty sound
And thus conclude the song:
‘Glory to God that reigns above,
Let peace surround the earth;
Mortals shall know their Maker’s love
At their Redeemer’s birth.’

Lord! and shall angels have their songs
And men no tunes to raise?
O may we lose these useless tongues
When they forget to praise!
‘Glory to God that reigns above,
That pitied us forlorn!’
We join to sing our Maker’s love,
For there’s a Saviour born.