the 2nd day of Christmas - Once in Royal David's City

Once in Royal David's City

Once in royal David's city stood a lowly cattle shed,

where a mother laid her baby in a manger for his bed:

Mary was that mother mild, Jesus Christ her little child.

He came down to earth from heaven, who is God and Lord of all,

and his shelter was a stable, and his cradle was a stall;

with the poor, the scorned, the lowly lived on earth our Savior holy.

This song was originally a poem written by Cecil Frances Alexander, who also wrote "All Things Bright and Beautiful." She wrote "Once in Royal David's City" as a children's poem, which is why it includes some moralistic fluff, particularly in her original Verse 3, about how Jesus was such a sweet little baby and therefore all children ought to remember how good Jesus was and be just as "mild, obedient, good as he." Ahem... yeah, except for that time he ditched his parents to stay on in Jerusalem at the temple. I'm sure Victorian parents would have appreciated such behavior from their kids... Mercifully, this verse is omitted from the Episcopal Hymnal 1982 and replaced with another (see below), and a few other changes are made to the lyrics to make them a little more adult-centric (ie, "lifelong pattern" substituted for "childhood's pattern" in verse 4). This is traditionally the first song of the Lessons & Carols service held in the Advent season in Anglican churches, begun at King's College Chapel Cambridge in 1919. Watch them sing it in King's College Chapel courtesy of the BBC. Boys choir alert! So adorable and talented.

You can read the hymn in its entirety here as Alexander originally wrote it and as its appears in the Episcopal hymnal here, in which her guilt trip of a verse 3 is exchanged for a verse written by James Waring McCrady:

We like Mary rest confounded that a stable should display

heaven's word, the world's Creator cradled there on Christmas Day,

yet this child, our Lord and brother brought us love for one another

Verse 4 is perhaps my favorite. It reminds us of the theological significance of the fact that Jesus began life as a baby; as a child. God took on human nature from its very start in order to share in all of its joys and sorrows:

For he is our lifelong pattern; daily, when on earth he grew;
he was tempted, scorned, rejected, tears and smiles like us he knew.

Thus he feels for all our sadness, and he shares in all our gladness.

Verse 5 and 6 contrast the scene at Jesus' birth with the glorious day when we shall see Jesus ourselves:

And our eyes at last shall see him through his own redeeming love;
for that child who seemed so helpless is our Lord in heaven above;
and he leads his children on to the place where he is gone.

Not in that poor lowly stable with the oxen standing round,
we shall see him; but in heaven, where his saints his throne surround:
Christ, revealed to faithful eye, set at God's right hand on high.

It's really lovely how this hymn moves effortlessly from the scene at the stable to the beatific vision of Christ enthroned in heaven. I wonder if Alexander had been meditating on Philippians 2 when she wrote this, because she captures both the great humility with which Christ gave up his heavenly glory to become incarnate, to become that little baby in the manger and the restoration of that glory at his ascension. One day we will have the honor of beholding him in that glory for ourselves.

Check out Sufjan Stevens' version of this song on his series of Christmas albums, "Songs for Christmas."