“Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” Luke 2:19
Creator, like many churches on Christmas Eve, opened singing with O Come, All Ye Faithful. The Bm7♭5 “word chord” reminded those gathered that Christmas is more than sentimental comfort, it’s cosmic disruption. Christ, the Word enters the world, and even the harmony has to wobble to make room. This chord is harmonically unstable and theologically loaded. Simultaneously, both an unforgettable tradition and an upending of all we want to hold onto tightly.
Opening her sermon, Pastor Emillie posed the question, "What does Christmas mean to you?" Snapshots of both more public and personal memories went through my mind.
I'm seventy years old this year. Suddenly, I reflected on being seven, when my family celebrated Christmas with a Hickory Farms cheeseball, krumkake cookies, and homemade glögg, a traditional Swedish mulled wine.
My family would "dress up" and go to church. I still remember the scent of the wood in the pews and the dim light of the candlelight service. Christmas Eve has taken on many meanings throughout the years, and how we honor the holiday season has changed in significant ways.
In an earlier blog post, I quoted a line given in a recent film, “Maybe these stories of faith aren’t lies or fantasies like Disneyland. Perhaps they resonate with something deep and profoundly true inside us that we can’t express any other way.”
I thought about how intertwined what I find meaningful about Christmas is both tied to and expressed by my family and Creator,
Many of the musical highlights, besides the carols, including Silent Night, Holy Night, I wrote about in A Midweek Advent Evening of Poetry, Prayer and Advent Music with Mychal and Theresa Lotz
I will highlight a different song the choir sang, "Do You Hear What I Hear?" during the services at offering time.
“Do You Hear What I Hear?” is one of those Christmas songs that sounds gentle and childlike on the surface, yet carries a surprisingly urgent and hopeful message underneath. It is not "traditional" yer. The song was written in 1962, at the height of the Cold War, by Noël Regney (music) and Gloria Shayne Baker (lyrics). Regney, who had lived through World War II in France, was deeply shaken by the Cuban Missile Crisis. He reportedly couldn’t bring himself to write a conventional Christmas carol about sleigh bells and snow. Instead, the song became a prayer for peace, like Crosby / Bowie's "Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy" duet, wrapped in a Christmas story.
That context matters. This isn’t just a nostalgic carol; it’s a song asking whether humanity is listening when peace is being announced. There is a chain of hearing, emphasized in performance by the message being echoed within the choir. The song unfolds as a series of conversations:
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The night wind speaks to the little lamb
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The lamb speaks to the shepherd boy
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The shepherd boy speaks to the mighty king
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The king speaks to the people everywhere
Each voice passes the message along. Peace doesn’t arrive with thunder; it travels through listening, trust, and telling. That structure mirrors the Christmas story itself, angels speaking to shepherds, shepherds bearing witness, ordinary people becoming messengers.
One of the most striking moments comes at the end:
“Pray for peace, people everywhere.”
The king is told that the child is “small” but “strong as a mountain.” This is deeply biblical. Like the Christ child, strength is not military or political dominance, but moral and spiritual gravity, a power that draws people toward peace rather than forcing them into submission.
This is a sharp reminder, and the song asks an uncomfortable question: Are we actually listening? Or have we heard the story so often that we stop letting it change us?
In a world that continues to know war, fear, and political brinkmanship, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” feels as relevant now as it did in 1962. Its repeated question is not rhetorical. It’s an invitation, perhaps even a challenge, to tune our ears to the quiet, persistent call of peace that Christmas proclaims.
In that sense, the song isn’t just about hearing a message long ago. It’s about whether we’re willing to become part of the chain that carries it forward.
For This Day
In which everything is meant for you
And nothing need be explained…. Wallace Stevens
For this day, the sweet lowings, the brays,
the heavenly music are all for us. The world
brings us the presents we so richly deserve,
for are we not children of the Father?
For this day we sit on Mary's blue lap
at home with ox, ass, shepherd, king, angel.
Yes, there is a Herod, but for this day
he rages off-stage in the empty city.
For this day, the trees are for us, and then,
“the whole wideness of the night.
Nils Peterson
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