One of my favorite parts of Christmas is singing—singing hymns, mostly, though I’d say it goes beyond that a little. Since my mother is German, we have not only all the usual English hymns to draw upon, but also a rich tradition of German Christmas music. It includes both hymns proper and a large number of what you’d probably call Christmas folk songs. (“O Tannenbaum,” or “O Christmas Tree,” is probably the one best known in English—at least you may have heard the melody.) One that I especially like is called “Am Weihnachtsbaum die Lichter Brennen,” “On the Tree the Lights are Burning” (remember, German Christmas trees have real candles!). I can’t easily summarize it, so I have endeavored to translate it for you below, with an effort to retain the rhyme scheme.
Upon the tree the candles burn A festive, kindly, mild light As if to say: observe and learn Of faithful hope the silent sight. The children stand with gazes bright, The eye it laughs, the heart it flies; O what a joyful, bless’d delight! Their elders look up to the skies. Two angels glide in silently, No eye has seen them in the room, Before the Christmas-table pray they piously, And turn, their travels to resume. “Blessings on you grown ones all, Blessed you children all tonight! God’s favor on each one we call The young hair brown, the aged white. To those whose good hearts love does fill As messengers of the Lord we come And if pious and loyal you are still We will again seek out this home.” No ear has heard their gentle tone No mortal eye has seen their glow Into the heavens they have flown But Godly favor stays below.
It's almost a sad song, really, when you hear the melody. But I like it so much because of the way Christmas transcends time. Christmas is a day whose joy, for the old, consists in bringing happiness to the young. Some day you find yourself looking forward to Christmas not because of the excitement or the presents, but because of the joy you will see on the faces of your younger siblings; and then maybe your own children. It is a day so full of tradition—the same tree, the same food, the same songs, the same ornaments, the same Christmassy air—as to be almost frozen in time: a kind of suspended reality in which nothing ever changes, save that each Christmas you are one year older, and everyone you love is one year older, too. And perhaps some Christmas those you love are gone. Every Christmas as a child I used to look forward to a letter from my great-grandpa. I used to look forward to a shipment of German gummy bears from my great-aunt. This year, for the first time, neither arrived.
So it is in the song: young and old, the brown hair and the white, are joined in state of awe and reverence, suspended, as it were, while the angels creep in unnoticed. We know the angels will return each year, as the white hair vanishes and the brown greys, so long as piety, honor, and humility remain within the hearts of their hosts, from generation to generation, until the end of time. You might say it is a holiday that places us helplessly before an infinite abyss of power, yet enveloped in the divine—in the very position of a defenseless infant, born into a cold world, with troops at his heels, yet safe within the gentle arms of his mother and the all-powerful hands of his father above.